A Bayesian Procedure for File Linking to Analyze End-of-Life Medical Costs.

ABSTRACT: End-of-life medical expenses are a significant proportion of all health care expenditures. These costs were studied using costs of services from Medicare claims and cause of death (CoD) from death certificates. In the absence of a unique identifier linking the two datasets, common variables identified unique matches for only 33% of deaths. The remaining cases formed cells with multiple cases (32% in cells with an equal number of cases from each file and 35% in cells with an unequal number). We sampled from the joint posterior distribution of model parameters and the permutations that link cases from the two files within each cell. The linking models included the regression of location of death on CoD and other parameters, and the regression of cost measures with a monotone missing data pat

SUBMITTER: Gutman R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3640583 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature