Medical spending and the health of the elderly.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To estimate the relationship between variations in medical spending and health outcomes of the elderly.

Data sources

1992-2002 Medicare Current Beneficiary Surveys.

Study design

We used instrumental variable (IV) estimation to identify the relationships between alternative measures of elderly Medicare beneficiaries' medical spending over a 3-year observation period and health status, measured by the Health and Activity Limitation Index (HALex) and survival status at the end of the 3 years. We used the Dartmouth Atlas End-of-Life Expenditure Index defined for hospital referral regions in 1996 as the exogenous identifying variable to construct the IVs for medical spending.

Data collection/extraction methods

The analysis sample includes 17,438 elderly (a

SUBMITTER: Hadley J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3207181 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature