Guidelines for Measuring Disease Episodes: An Analysis of the Effects on the Components of Expenditure Growth

Abstract

The selected allocation method impacts aggregate inflation rates, but considering the variety of methods applied, the differences appear small. Future research is necessary to better understand these differences in other population samples and to connect disease expenditures to measures of quality.

Price Indexes for US Medical Care Spending, 1980–2006

“…Although our data only allow us to decompose the effect of shifts across insurance types separately in the last period (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006), we find that this effect is very small, despite the managed care backlash that prompted patients to switch back to more-generous plans. Instead, most of the growth in the MCE above that in the BEA deflator in that period is accounted for by growth in utilization, a result consistent with Pinkovskiy (2013) and Dunn et al (2014). We argue that this makes it unlikely that insurance shifts, in and of themselves, account for much of the differences between the MCE and official price index during the earlier run-up.…”

Adjusting Health Expenditures for Inflation: A Review of Measures for Health Services Research in the United States

“…; Roehrig and Rousseau ; Starr, Dominiak, and Aizcorbe ; Aizcorbe and Nestoriak ; Dunn et al. , ; Dunn, Leibman, and Shapiro ). BEA recently released a Health Care Satellite Account (HCSA) that reports spending and associated cost indexes by disease condition (Dunn, Rittmueller, and Whitmire , ).…”

“…Several papers have conducted studies measuring the cost of treatment over time using either MEPS data or claims data for a comprehensive list of medical conditions (e.g., Aizcorbe et al 2013;Bradley 2013;Bradley et al 2010;Rosen et al 2013;Roehrig and Rousseau 2011;Starr, Dominiak, and Aizcorbe 2014;Aizcorbe and Nestoriak 2011;Dunn et al 2013Dunn et al , 2014Dunn, Leibman, and Shapiro 2015). BEA recently released a Health Care Satellite Account (HCSA) that reports spending and associated cost indexes by disease condition (Dunn, Rittmueller, andWhitmire 2015, 2016).…”

Implications of Utilization Shifts on Medical‐care Price Measurement

“…The ETG Symmetry grouper is applied to one calendar year of data at a time. Although this limits the amount of information used for each person (because we often observe multiple years), it also avoids potential biases that may occur if the grouper is not applied symmetrically across all years Dunn et al, .…”

“…Dunn et al, investigated how applying different methodologies to allocate expenditures to disease episodes may affect the various components of expenditure growth. Specifically, we analyze disease decompositions by applying different grouper software, including the ETG Symmetry grouper from Optum (used here) and the Medical Episode Grouper (MEG) from Truven Health.…”