Datasets / Medicare Payments, How Much Do Chronic Conditions Matter


Medicare Payments, How Much Do Chronic Conditions Matter

Published By U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Issued over 9 years ago

US
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Summary

Type of release
a one-off release of a set of related datasets

Data Licence
Not Applicable

Content Licence
Creative Commons CCZero

Verification
automatically awarded

Description

There has been a growing interest in understanding the utilization patterns of patients with chronic conditions. Even though there is a lack of standard definition and identification of a chronic condition, these conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes, are long-lasting and persistent health problems that require continuous care. Recent research has emphasized the disproportionate share of beneficiaries with chronic conditions in healthcare expenditures (Anderson, 2010). For example, patients with multiple chronic conditions can cost up to seven times as much as patients with only one chronic condition. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic diseases are responsible for more than 75 percent of the 2.5 trillion spent annually on health care. Examples of efforts to estimate the spending or costs by individual conditions are shown in Exhibit 1.