Objectives To assess international comparability of general cost of illness (COI) studies and to examine the extent to which COI estimates differ and why.Methods Five general COI studies were examined. COI estimates were classified by health provider using the system of health accounts (SHA). Provider groups fully included in all studies and matching SHA estimates were selected to create a common data set. In order to explain cost differences descriptive analyses were carried out on a number of determinants.Results In general similar COI patterns emerged for these countries, despite their health care system differences. In addition to these similarities, certain significant disease-specific differences were found. Comparisons of nursing and residential care expenditure by disease showed major variation. Epidemiological explanations of differences were hardly found, whereas demographic differences were influential. Significant treatment variation appeared from hospital data.Conclusions A systematic analysis of COI data from different countries may assist in comparing health expenditure internationally. All cost data dimensions shed greater light on the effects of health care system differences within various aspects of health care. Still, the study's objectives can only be reached by a further improvement of the SHA, by international use of the SHA in COI studies and by a standardized methodology.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Health Policy.
Volume (Year): 88 (2008) Issue (Month): 1 (October) Pages: 49-61 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF