The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #58219

Sharon L. Larson, PhD and Amy K. Taylor, PhD. Center for Cost and Financing Studies, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), 2101 East Jefferson Street, Suite 500, Rockville, MD 20852, 301-594-7080, slarson@ahrq.gov

As the U.S. population continues to age, the ramifications of older women’s health care expenditures will become increasingly important to policy makers concerned with Medicare spending. Women are longer-lived, less likely to report good or excellent health, more likely to report functional disability, and more likely to utilize medical care services than men. Few studies provide an overarching examination of older women’s health care use and expenditures in relation to their social, demographic and specific health characteristics. This analysis examines medical care expenditures and the burden of these expenditures for older women in several healthcare categories. We consider the effect of differential group membership of women (race, income, etc) as well as their report of specific chronic and priority conditions on these expenditures. In preliminary analyses, elderly high-income women consistently reported higher expenditures for inpatient, outpatient, and home health than elderly women with lower income. Non-white elderly women reported higher emergency room expenditures than white women. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is used to analyze specific conditions in relation to utilization and expenditures for ambulatory, inpatient, prescription, home health, and emergency care. These data provide information about source of payment, enriching the analysis with an examination of the burden of care for specific categories of health services when older women report conditions such as heart disease, stroke, depression, cancer, hypertension and diabetes. Policy makers will benefit from information about the burden of medical expenditures as they consider mechanisms for paying for the healthcare of an aging baby-boomer generation.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe expenditures by elderly women for ambulatory, inpatient, prescription, home health, emergency and dental health care, and how these health services are financed.
• Assess the effect of differential group membership of women on health care expenditures.
• Articulate the outcome of chronic and priority health conditions on different types of health services expenditures of elderly women.

Keywords: Women's Health, Medicare

Related Web page: www.meps.ahrq.gov/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: WE use data collected by the federal agency, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)--The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.