The price of success: what is the impact of improving patients’ survival on utilisation of care?

ended

Unplanned emergency admissions absorb a large share of the resources allocated to the Health System and are growing at a fast rate in many European countries. The drivers of this growth go beyond demographic factors and have not been properly investigated until recently due to the lack of rich longitudinal datasets following a large population of patients for many years and a gap in the transfer of knowledge between Economics and Public Health disciplines. My ambition is to fill this gap in the knowledge by applying state-of-the-art econometric models to an exceptionally comprehensive and longitudinal dataset on the population of Danish patients, thus offering a unique opportunity to inform new policies on the appropriate tools to manage the growing demand for emergency care and the financial sustainability of the Health System, and policies aiming at reducing hospital readmissions. Access to new data, knowledge and training at the Danish Centre for Health Economics in SDU will allow me to greatly advance and expand my stream of research and will have a remarkable impact on my career development. The proposed research will address the following questions: 1. What is the long-term impact of improving patients' survival on subsequent use and costs of care? 2. To what extent can primary care reduce the use of secondary care following “the survival effect”? 3. To what extent can higher integration of care between acute and post-acute services reduce the use of secondary care following the survival effect? 4. Is the impact of the survival effect different according to patient’s socioeconomic characteristics? I will identify the profile of patients who are more likely to use care after surviving an acute event, and those who are more likely to benefit from primary care and integration of care interventions.