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- Title
Healthcare Warranty Policies Optimization for Chronic Diseases Based on Delay Time Concept.
- Authors
Zhao, Heng; Liu, Zixian; Li, Mei; Liang, Lijun
- Abstract
Warranties for healthcare can be greatly beneficial for cost reductions and improvements in patient satisfaction. Under healthcare warranties, healthcare providers receive a lump sum payment for the entire care episode, which covers a bundle of healthcare services, including treatment decisions during initial hospitalization and subsequent readmissions, as well as disease-monitoring plans composed of periodic follow-ups. Higher treatment intensities and more radical monitoring strategies result in higher medical costs, but high treatment intensities reduce the baseline readmission rates. This study intends to provide a systematic optimization framework for healthcare warranty policies. In this paper, the proposed model allows healthcare providers to determine the optimal combination of treatment decisions and disease-monitoring policies to minimize the total expected healthcare warranty cost over the prespecified period. Given the nature of the disease progression, we introduced a delay time model to simulate the progression of chronic diseases. Based on this, we formulated an accumulated age model to measure the effect of follow-up on the patient's readmission risk. By means of the proposed model, the optimal treatment intensity and the monitoring policy can be derived. A case study of pediatric type 1 diabetes mellitus is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model. The findings could form the basis of developing effective healthcare warranty policies for patients with chronic diseases.
- Subjects
CHRONIC diseases; TYPE 1 diabetes; MEDICAL personnel; WARRANTY; MEDICAL care costs
- Publication
Healthcare (2227-9032), 2021, Vol 9, Issue 8, p1088
- ISSN
2227-9032
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/healthcare9081088