Health care costs

Background: Wheezing is an important health problem in Thailand especially among preschool age.; Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate costs of wheezing for hospitalization in preschool children under patient, provider, and societal perspectives.

Objectives: To examine the effect of the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Caregivers (PCAFC) on total VA health care costs for Veterans. Data Sources: VA claims. Study Design: Using a pre-post cohort design with nonequivalent control group, we estimated the effect of PCAFC on total VA costs up through 6 years. The treatment group included Veterans (n = 32 394) whose caregivers enrolled in PCAFC.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of Helping Invested Families Improve Veterans' Experiences Study (HI-FIVES), a skills training program for caregivers of persons with functional or cognitive impairments. Design: A two-arm RCT. Setting: Single Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Participants: Patients and their primary caregivers referred in the past 6 months to home and community-based services or geriatrics clinic. Intervention: All caregivers received usual care.

The United States relies on uncompensated family caregivers to provide most of the long-term care required by older adults as they age. But such care comes at a significant financial cost to these caregivers in the form of lower lifetime earnings and diminished (or even no) Social Security retirement benefits, ineligibility for Medicare coverage of their healthcare costs, and minimal retirement savings.

The objectives of this cross-sectional analysis were to determine healthcare resource utilization and cost for community-dwelling patients with dementia (PWD) from a payer's and societal perspective, and to analyze the associations between costs and sociodemographic and clinical variables. Analysis of healthcare costs from a payer's perspective was based on a sample of 425 PWD, analysis of healthcare costs from societal perspective on a subsample of 254 PWD and their informal caregivers. Frequency of healthcare resource utilization was assessed by means of questionnaires.

Objectives: To determine the effect of integrating informal caregivers into discharge planning on postdischarge cost and resource use in older adults.; Design: A systematic review and metaanalysis of randomized controlled trials that examine the effect of discharge planning with caregiver integration begun before discharge on healthcare cost and resource use outcomes.

Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the cost of dementia in the Czech Republic.; Methods: One hundred and nineteen patient-caregiver dyads participated in our multicenter observational cost-of-illness study. The modified Resource Utilization in Dementia Questionnaire was used as the main tool to collect data from patients and caregivers. Medical specialists provided additional data from medical records. The average costs of dementia were calculated and patients were then divided by the level of cognitive impairment.

Population forecasters have predicted that the proportion of people in the UK aged 65 years and older will rise significantly in coming decades. This shift in demographics will put increasing pressure on the National Health Service and providers of social care. However, older people do not rely only on care provided by the state; informal care of the elderly is often supplied by family and friends. Therefore, the relationship between formal and informal care and the reaction of informal carers to institutional changes is an important policy issue.