Does Better Disease Management in Primary Care Reduce Hospital Costs?

Mark Dusheiko, Hugh Gravelle, Stephen Martin, Nigel Rice and Peter Smith
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Mark Dusheiko: Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK
Peter Smith: Imperial College Buisiness School, UK

No 065cherp, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Abstract: We apply cross-sectional and panel data methods to a database of 5 million patients in 8,000 English general practices to examine whether better primary care management of 10 chronic diseases is associated with reduced hospital costs. We find that only primary care performance in stroke care is associated with lower hospital costs. Our results suggest that the 10% improvement in the general practice quality of stroke care between 2004/5 and 2007/8 reduced 2007/8 hospital expenditure by about £130 million in England. The cost savings are due mainly to reductions in emergency admissions and outpatient visits, rather than to lower costs for patients treated in hospital or to reductions in elective admissions.

Keywords: Quality; disease management; primary care; hospital costs; ambulatory care sensitive conditions; preventative care. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

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http://www.york.ac.uk/media/che/documents/papers/r ... e_hospital_costs.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chy:respap:65cherp

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