Home About us Contact | |||
State Medicaid Program (state + medicaid_program)
Selected AbstractsTREATMENT PERSISTENCY WITH RIVASTIGMINE AND DONEPEZIL IN A LARGE STATE MEDICAID PROGRAMJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 7 2005Gurkirpal Singh MD No abstract is available for this article. [source] Rural-Urban Differences in Health Risks, Resource Use and Expenditures Within Three State Medicaid Programs: Implications for Medicaid Managed CareTHE JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 1 2002Janet M. Bronstein Ph.D. This study uses Medicaid claims data for income-eligible enrollees in California, Georgia and Mississippi to compare expenditures, resource usage and health risks between residents of rural and urban areas of the states. Resource use is measured using the Resource Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) system for professional services, hospital days and outpatient facility visits; it also is valued at private insurance reimbursement rates for the states. Health risks are measured using the diagnosis-based Adjusted Clinical Group system. Resource use is compared on a risk-adjusted basis with the use of urban Medicaid enrollees as the benchmark. We find that actual expenditures for rural care users are lower than for urban care users. However, because the proportion of Medicaid enrollees who use care is higher in rural than in urban areas in all three states, expenditures per rural enrollee are not consistently lower. Case mix is more resource intensive for rural compared to urban residents in all three states. Although resource usage is not systematically lower owerall for rural enrollees, on a risk-adjusted basis they tend to use less hospital resources than urban enrollees. Capitation rates based on historical per enrollee expenditures would not appear to under-reimburse managed care organizations for the care of rural as opposed to urban residents in the study states. [source] Application of Regression-Discontinuity Analysis in Pharmaceutical Health Services ResearchHEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 2 2006Ilene H. Zuckerman Objective. To demonstrate how a relatively underused design, regression-discontinuity (RD), can provide robust estimates of intervention effects when stronger designs are impossible to implement. Data Sources/Study Setting. Administrative claims from a Mid-Atlantic state Medicaid program were used to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational drug utilization review intervention. Study Design. Quasi-experimental design. Data Collection/Extraction Methods. A drug utilization review study was conducted to evaluate a letter intervention to physicians treating Medicaid children with potentially excessive use of short-acting ,2 -agonist inhalers (SAB). The outcome measure is change in seasonally-adjusted SAB use 5 months pre- and postintervention. To determine if the intervention reduced monthly SAB utilization, results from an RD analysis are compared to findings from a pretest,posttest design using repeated-measure ANOVA. Principal Findings. Both analyses indicated that the intervention significantly reduced SAB use among the high users. Average monthly SAB use declined by 0.9 canisters per month (p<.001) according to the repeated-measure ANOVA and by 0.2 canisters per month (p<.001) from RD analysis. Conclusions. Regression-discontinuity design is a useful quasi-experimental methodology that has significant advantages in internal validity compared to other pre,post designs when assessing interventions in which subjects' assignment is based on cutoff scores for a critical variable. [source] Potential savings from increased use of generic drugs in the elderly: what the experience of Medicaid and other insurance programs means for a Medicare drug benefitPHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY AND DRUG SAFETY, Issue 4 2004Michael A. Fischer MD Abstract Background Generic medications provide the same clinical effect at lower cost than brand name drugs but little is known about the extent to which such savings are achieved in drug benefit programs serving the elderly. Methods Using patient-level claims data for participants aged 65 or more in one state Medicaid program and in a non-Medicaid drug insurance program for the elderly, we compared the expenditures in each program for brand name prescriptions with the amount that would have been paid for generic versions of the same agents. We then estimated potential savings from increased use of substitutable brand name drugs. Results There was an unrealized annual savings of $3.4 million (3.6% of total drug expenditure) in the Medicaid program studied and $13.7 million (9.5% of total drug expenditure) in the non-Medicaid drug insurance program for the elderly, with corresponding reductions in mean annual per-patient drug costs. Conclusions More widespread use of generic medications represents an important source of unrealized savings in drug coverage programs for the elderly. The Medicaid program limits the excess spending on brand name drugs by imposing pricing restrictions, but many non-Medicaid programs could realize even larger savings from reducing the use of brand name drugs when identical generic products are available. These findings offer some insight into the potential expense of a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] |