Jean Yoon1,2,3, Christine Pal Chee1,3,4, Pon Su1, Peter Almenoff5, Donna M Zulman3,6, Todd H Wagner1,3,7. 1. Health Economics Resource Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA. 2. Department of General Internal Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine, Menlo Park, CA. 3. Center for Innovation to Implementation, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA. 4. Public Policy Program, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. 5. VHA Office of Reporting Analytics, Performance, Improvement & Deployment, Kansas, MO. 6. Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA. 7. Department of Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To examine high-cost patients in VA and factors associated with persistence in high costs over time. DATA SOURCES: Secondary data for FY2008-2012. DATA EXTRACTION: We obtained VA and Medicare utilization and cost records for VA enrollees and drew a 20 percent random sample (N = 1,028,568). STUDY DESIGN: We identified high-cost patients, defined as those in the top 10 percent of combined VA and Medicare costs, and determined the number of years they remained high cost over 4 years. We compared sociodemographics, clinical characteristics, and baseline utilization by number of high-cost years and conducted a discrete time survival analysis to predict high-cost persistence. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Among 105,703 patients with the highest 10 percent of costs at baseline, 68 percent did not remain high cost in subsequent years, 32 percent had high costs after 1 year, and 7 percent had high costs in all four follow-up years. Mortality, which was 47 percent by end of follow-up, largely explained low persistence. The largest percentage of patients who persisted as high cost until end of follow-up was for spinal cord injury (16 percent). CONCLUSION: Most high-cost patients did not remain high cost in subsequent years, which poses challenges to providers and payers to manage utilization of these patients. Published 2018. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
OBJECTIVES: To examine high-cost patients in VA and factors associated with persistence in high costs over time. DATA SOURCES: Secondary data for FY2008-2012. DATA EXTRACTION: We obtained VA and Medicare utilization and cost records for VA enrollees and drew a 20 percent random sample (N = 1,028,568). STUDY DESIGN: We identified high-cost patients, defined as those in the top 10 percent of combined VA and Medicare costs, and determined the number of years they remained high cost over 4 years. We compared sociodemographics, clinical characteristics, and baseline utilization by number of high-cost years and conducted a discrete time survival analysis to predict high-cost persistence. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Among 105,703 patients with the highest 10 percent of costs at baseline, 68 percent did not remain high cost in subsequent years, 32 percent had high costs after 1 year, and 7 percent had high costs in all four follow-up years. Mortality, which was 47 percent by end of follow-up, largely explained low persistence. The largest percentage of patients who persisted as high cost until end of follow-up was for spinal cord injury (16 percent). CONCLUSION: Most high-cost patients did not remain high cost in subsequent years, which poses challenges to providers and payers to manage utilization of these patients. Published 2018. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
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