A System and Methods for Determining Healthcare Costs
- Detailed Technology Description
- Thisinvention provides a system and methods for determining healthcare costs byidentifying patients who will incur high future healthcare costs and highfuture rates of hospitalization, repeated hospitalization and readmission usingthe Charlson Comorbidity Index
- Others
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- The Charlson comorbidity index canbe used prospectively to identify patients who will incur high future costs,PLoSOne, 2014, 9, e112479.
- Medicaid managed care: how totarget efforts to reduce costs, BMC Health Serv. Res., 2014,14, 461.
- *Abstract
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To successfully reduce health costs,interventions have to target those patients most likely to incur future highcosts. Patients with multiple chronicdiseases have increasingly become a critical focus for national efforts toreduce utilization and improve outcomes. However, there is no consensus aboutthe criteria to define multiple chronic diseases and the definition variesconsiderably in different studies.
Cornell researchers operationallydefined multiple chronic diseases using an enhanced Charlson comorbidityindex. They evaluated whether thecomorbidity index could identify those patients who would incur high healthcare costs and high future rates of hospitalization and repeatedhospitalization in a subsequent year in a large population. Their studies demonstrated that the Charlsoncomorbidity index from a prior year predicted high health costs in thesubsequent year and identified those who would fall in the top 5% or 10% of costsin both adults and children.
PotentialApplications
Predicts and identifies patients who will incur high futurehealthcare costs and high future rates of hospitalization, repeatedhospitalization and readmission
Advantages
Providesa reproducible and prospectively applicable method of identifying patients athigh risk of incurring high subsequent costs
- *Licensing
- Brian J. Kellybjk44@cornell.edu646-962-7045
- Country/Region
- USA

