Understanding The Determinants Of Health Care Costs Among Patients With Psychotic Disorders

Speaker: Claire de Oliveira

Date/Time: May 1, 10 AM – 12 PM

Abstract:

This paper examines the influence of psychotic relapses on direct health care costs of patients with schizophrenia. We make use of longitudinal administrative health care data of patients diagnosed with chronic psychotic disorders in Ontario followed over six consecutive time points. We apply a two-part random effects model. Our findings show a positive and statistically significant impact of psychotic relapses on annual health care costs after accounting for relevant socio-demographic and clinical variables, and various econometric approaches. These results suggest that in order to reduce costs among patients with schizophrenia we need to find ways of reducing the likelihood of psychotic relapses among these patients.

Biography:

Dr. Claire de Oliveira is a scientist and health economist in the Social and Epidemiological Research (SER) Department at CAMH, and an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto. Dr. de Oliveira is also a collaborator at the Toronto Health Economics Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA), an associate member of the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC) and a faculty associate at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics (CCHE). ​

Her main areas of research include the use of administrative health care data to estimate health care utilization and costs associated with mental health disorders and cancer, and the development of comparable costing methodology using Canadian data. Her most recent work has examined high cost users of mental health care services in Ontario as well as the costs of care among patients with psychotic disorders.