Despite the claim that technology has been one of the most important drivers of healthcare spending growth over the past decades, technology variables are rarely introduced explicitly in cost equations. Furthermore, technology is often considered exogenous. Using 1996-2007 panel data on Swiss geographical areas, we assessed the impact of technology availability on per capita healthcare spending...

BACKGROUND Medical Savings Accounts are an attempt to reduce health care costs by transferring responsibility for expenditures to patients, while providing them with state-supported base amounts to cover some of the costs. We wondered whether such a system would actually be effective, given the fact that medical care expenditures (and illness) are unequally distributed across the population. ...

This paper deals with the problem of linear regression for medical cost data when some study subjects are not followed for the full duration of interest so that their total costs are unknown. Standard survival analysis techniques are ill-suited to this type of censoring. The familiar normal equations for the least-squares estimation are modified in several ways to properly account for the incom...

AIM To determine healthcare resource utilization and the economic burden associated with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Thailand. METHODS This study included patients diagnosed with wet AMD that were 60 years old or older, and had best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) measured at least two times during the follow-up period. We excluded patients having other eye diseases. Two sepa...

background: the healthcare and socio-economic burden resulting from influenza a (h1n1) pdm09 in spain was considerable. our aim was to estimate and compare the management (resource utilization) and economic healthcare impact in an at-risk group of unvaccinated pregnant women with an unvaccinated group of non-pregnant woman of childbearing age (15-44 yr old). methods: we addressed this question ...

background: in order to extend hbv immunization to twenty-five-year old adolescents, ministry of health and medical education (moh & me) in iran has decided to implement hbv mass vaccination campaign for adolescents who were born from 1989 to 1992. the first three-round campaign covering 1989 born adolescents was implemented in 2007 in iran. this study was conducted for cost estimation and anal...

Background: Tremendous difficulties are imposed on families with preterm and premature babies, both at birth and during their lifetime. The present study aimed at evaluating the potential economic impact of preterm and premature birth in Iran.    Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study (2014-2015), we studied preterm and premature newborns, who have been subjected to hospi...