OBJECTIVE To analyze variability in urologists' Medicare utilization and payment and estimate potential cost savings of standardized service utilization using information from the recently released Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File (PUF) and to highlight potential limitations of PUF analysis. MATERIALS AND METHODS The Centers for Medi...

The Genetic Resource Center (GRC) is a centralized process for requesting genetic testing that is not available within the province (Alberta, Canada). In order to assess potential cost savings associated with this process, all applications received by the GRC in 2010 were reviewed, and cost savings were recorded for statistical analysis. Seven areas of cost savings were identified: (i) negotiat...

To help reach the target of tuberculosis (TB) disease elimination by 2050, vaccine development needs to occur now. We estimated the impact and cost-effectiveness of potential TB vaccines in low- and middle-income countries using an age-structured transmission model. New vaccines were assumed to be available in 2024, to prevent active TB in all individuals, to have a 5-y to lifetime duration of ...

CONTEXT Effective community-based interventions are available to control hypertension. It is important to determine the economics of these interventions. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION Peer-reviewed studies from January 1995 through December 2015 were screened. Interventions were categorized into educational interventions, self-monitoring interventions, and screening interventions. Incremental cost-eff...

We present a new framework for assessing the effects of hospital closures on social welfare and the local economy. While patient welfare necessarily declines when patients lose access to a hospital, closures also tend to reduce costs. We study five hospital closures in two states and find that urban hospital bailouts reduce aggregate social welfare: on balance, the cost savings from closures mo...

Buildings are among the largest consumers of energy. Part of the energy is wasted due to the habits of users and equipment conditions. A solution to this problem is efficient energy usage. To this end, an energy audit can be conducted to assess the energy efficiency. This study aims to analyze the energy usage of a primary school and identify the potential energy reductions and cost savings. A ...

The shortage of resources for providing renal replacement makes it essential to reduce revenue costs wherever possible. Assuming that haemodialysis is likely to remain a mainstay of renal replacement, a policy of reusing the expensive disposable dialysers and blood lines could offer substantial cost savings. Such reuse has been shown to be safe and to maintain efficiency, but it must also take ...

BACKGROUND Shortened treatment regimens for tuberculosis are under development to improve treatment outcomes and reduce costs. We estimated potential savings from a societal perspective in Brazil following the introduction of a hypothetical four-month regimen for tuberculosis treatment. METHODS Data were gathered in ten randomly selected health facilities in Rio de Janeiro. Health service cos...