IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eujhec/v14y2013i3p407-413.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Terminal patients in Belgian nursing homes: a cost analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Simoens
  • Betty Kutten
  • Emmanuel Keirse
  • Paul Berghe
  • Claire Beguin
  • Marianne Desmedt
  • Myriam Deveugele
  • Christian Léonard
  • Dominique Paulus
  • Johan Menten

Abstract

Policy makers and health care payers are concerned about the costs of treating terminal patients. This study was done to measure the costs of treating terminal patients during the final month of life in a sample of Belgian nursing homes from the health care payer perspective. Also, this study compares the costs of palliative care with those of usual care. This multicenter, retrospective cohort study enrolled terminal patients from a representative sample of nursing homes. Health care costs included fixed nursing home costs, medical fees, pharmacy charges, other charges, and eventual hospitalization costs. Data sources consisted of accountancy and invoice data. The analysis calculated costs per patient during the final month of life at 2007/2008 prices. Nineteen nursing homes participated in the study, generating a total of 181 patients. Total mean nursing home costs amounted to 3,243 € per patient during the final month of life. Total mean nursing home costs per patient of 3,822 € for patients receiving usual care were higher than costs of 2,456 € for patients receiving palliative care (p = 0.068). Higher costs of usual care were driven by higher hospitalization costs (p > 0.001). This study suggests that palliative care models in nursing homes need to be supported because such care models appear to be less expensive than usual care and because such care models are likely to better reflect the needs of terminal patients. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Simoens & Betty Kutten & Emmanuel Keirse & Paul Berghe & Claire Beguin & Marianne Desmedt & Myriam Deveugele & Christian Léonard & Dominique Paulus & Johan Menten, 2013. "Terminal patients in Belgian nursing homes: a cost analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(3), pages 407-413, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:14:y:2013:i:3:p:407-413
    DOI: 10.1007/s10198-012-0384-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10198-012-0384-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10198-012-0384-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simon Chang & Yang He & Chee‐Ruey Hsieh, 2014. "The Determinants Of Health Care Expenditure Toward The End Of Life: Evidence From Taiwan," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(8), pages 951-961, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:14:y:2013:i:3:p:407-413. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.