A National Asthma Programme was undertaken in Finland from 1994 to 2004 to improve asthma care and prevent an increase in costs. The main goal was to lessen the burden of asthma to individuals and society.
The action programme focused on implementation of new knowledge, especially for primary care. The main premise underpinning the campaign was that asthma is an inflammatory disease and requires anti-inflammatory treatment from the outset. The key for implementation was an effective network of asthma-responsible professionals and development of a post hoc evaluation strategy. In 1997 Finnish pharmacies were included in the Pharmacy Programme and in 2002 a Childhood Asthma mini-Programme was launched.
The incidence of asthma is still increasing, but the burden of asthma has decreased considerably. The number of hospital days has fallen by 54% from 110 000 in 1993 to 51 000 in 2003, 69% in relation to the number of asthmatics (n = 135 363 and 207 757, respectively), with the trend still downwards. In 1993, 7212 patients of working age (9% of 80 133 asthmatics) received a disability pension from the Social Insurance Institution compared with 1741 in 2003 (1.5% of 116 067 asthmatics). The absolute decrease was 76%, and 83% in relation to the number of asthmatics. The increase in the cost of asthma (compensation for disability, drugs, hospital care, and outpatient doctor visits) ended: in 1993 the costs were 218 million euro which had fallen to 213.5 million euro in 2003. Costs per patient per year have decreased 36% (from 1611 euro to 1031 euro).
It is possible to reduce the morbidity of asthma and its impact on individuals as well as on society. Improvements would have taken place without the programme, but not of this magnitude.
Notes
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The Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada asked whether Medicare is sustainable in its present form. Well, Medicare is not sustainable for at least six reasons. Given a long list of factors, such as Canada's changing dependency ratio, the phenomenon of diminishing returns from increased taxation, competing provincial expenditure needs, low labour and technological productivity in government-funded healthcare, the expectations held by baby boomers, and the evolving value sets of Canadians--Medicare will impoverish Canada within the next couple of decades if not seriously recast. As distasteful as parallel private-pay, private-choice healthcare may be to some policy makers and providers who grew up in the 1960s, the reality of the 2020s will dictate its necessity as a pragmatic solution to a systemic problem.
We compared health status, access to care, and utilization of medical services in the United States and Canada and compared disparities according to race, income, and immigrant status.
We analyzed population-based data on 3505 Canadian and 5183 US adults from the Joint Canada/US Survey of Health. Controlling for gender, age, income, race, and immigrant status, we used logistic regression to analyze country as a predictor of access to care, quality of care, and satisfaction with care and as a predictor of disparities in these measures.
In multivariate analyses, US respondents (compared with Canadians) were less likely to have a regular doctor, more likely to have unmet health needs, and more likely to forgo needed medicines. Disparities on the basis of race, income, and immigrant status were present in both countries but were more extreme in the United States.
United States residents are less able to access care than are Canadians. Universal coverage appears to reduce most disparities in access to care.
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Health care policy in Canada is based on providing public funding for medically necessary physician and hospital-based services free at the point of delivery ("first-dollar public funding"). Studies consistently show that the introduction of public funding to support the provision of health care services free at the point of delivery is associated with increases in the proportionate share of services used by the poor and in population distributions of services that are independent of income. Claims about the success of Canada's health care policy tend to be based on these findings, without reference to medical necessity. This article adopts a needs-based perspective to reviewing the distribution of health care services. Despite the removal of user prices, significant barriers remain to services being distributed in accordance with need-the objective of needs-based access to services remains elusive. The increased fiscal pressures imposed on health care in the 1990s, together with the failure of health care policy to encompass the changing nature of health care delivery, seem to represent further departures from policy objectives. In addition, there is evidence of increasing public dissatisfaction with the performance of the system. A return to modest increases in public funding in the new millennium has not been sufficient to arrest these trends. Widespread support for first-dollar public funding needs to be accompanied by greater attention to the scope of the legislation and the adoption of a needs-based focus among health care policymakers.
Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 1620 Tremont St, Suite 3030, Boston, MA 02120, USA. schneeweiss@post.harvard.edu
As medication spending grows, Medicare Part D will need to adapt its coverage policies according to emerging evidence from a variety of insurance policies. We sought to evaluate the consequences of copayment and coinsurance policies on the initiation of statin therapy after acute myocardial infarction and adherence to therapy in statin initiators using a natural experiment of all British Columbia residents aged 66 years and older.
Three consecutive cohorts that included all patients who began statin therapy during full drug coverage (2001), coverage with a $10 or $25 copay (2002), and coverage with a 25% coinsurance benefit (2003-2004) were followed up with linked healthcare utilization data (n=51,561). Follow-up of cohorts was 9 months after each policy change. Adherence to statin therapy was defined as > or = 80% of days covered. Relative to full-coverage policies, adherence to new statin therapy was significantly reduced, from 55.8% to 50.5%, under a fixed copayment policy (-5.4% points; 95% CI, -6.4% to -4.4%) and the subsequent coinsurance policy (-5.4% points; 95% CI, -6.3% to -4.4%). An uninterrupted increase in the proportion of patients initiating statin therapy after an acute myocardial infarction (1.7% points per quarter) was observed over the study period, similar to a Pennsylvania control population with full coverage. Sudden changes to full out-of-pocket spending, similar to Medicare's Part D "doughnut hole," almost doubled the risk of stopping statins (adjusted odds ratio, 1.94, 95% CI, 1.82 to 2.08).
Fixed patient copayment and coinsurance policies have negative effects on adherence to statin lipid-lowering drug therapy but not on their initiation after myocardial infarction.
The implementation of inpatient case mix funding in Alberta and Ontario does not allow for adequate incentives to shift resources to an outpatient basis, where appropriate, or to provide outpatient care efficiently. This paper explores the prospects and problems of further extending case mix tools into this area. The availability of tools to characterize output for day surgery, special clinics and emergency care is surveyed. We conclude that case mix funding is desirable and feasible for ambulatory surgery; however, it is questionable for emergency care and special clinics. However, developments in this area in the United States will continue, and this will likely maintain an interest in Canada.