← Search

American Economic Review Vol. 101 No. 3 2011

Quality Adjustment for Health Care Spending on Chronic Disease: Evidence from Diabetes Treatment, 1999–2009

Karen Eggleston1; Nilay D. Shah2; Steven A. Smith3; Ernst R. Berndt4; Joseph P. Newhouse5

1 Stanford University Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 616 Serra Street, Encina Hall E301, Stanford, CA 94305-6055. · 2 Division of Health Care Policy and Research, College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905. · 3 Division of Endocrinology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905. · 4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and NBER, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142. · 5 Harvard Kennedy School; Harvard Medical School; Harvard School of Public Health; and NBER, 180 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115-5899.

open access

Abstract

US health care expenditures reached $2.5 trillion in 2009, representing 17.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and $8,086 per person (US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 2011). Since health care represents a large and growing share of the economy, and factors such as population aging imply that chronic disease treatment will continue to expand as a share of health expenditures, developing methods for assessing the value of quality improvement for chronic disease spending is of increasing importance for accurately measuring real economic activity. This paper develops a method for assessing the value of quality changes associated with health care for patients living with one important chronic disease, diabetes mellitus, using 11 years of detailed data on spending and quality of care for over 800 patients. We first provide an overview of measurement issues for health care quality, and then present our data, methods, results, and a brief discussion.

DOI
10.1257/aer.101.3.206
Volume
101
Issue
3
Pages
206-211
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite