Recent Findings from A.A. Rondas and Co-Researchers Yields New Information on Health Insurance (Cost analysis of one of the first outpatient wound…

Recent Findings from A.A. Rondas and Co-Researchers Yields New Information on Health Insurance (Cost analysis of one of the first outpatient wound clinics in the Netherlands)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Data detailed on Health Insurance have been presented. According to news reporting from Venlo, Netherlands, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, "To perform, from an insurance perspective, a cost analysis of one of the outpatient community wound care clinics in the Netherlands, the Knowledge Centre in Wound Care (KCWC) at Venray. This study involved a cost analysis based on an observational cohort study with a one-year pre-admission and a one-year post-admission comparison of costs."

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research, "Patients were included when they first consulted the outpatient wound care clinic. Participants were all insured by the same health insurance company, Cooperatie Volksgezondheidszorg (VGZ). A standard six-step procedure for performing cost studies was used to calculate the costs. Given the skewed cost data, non-parametric bootstrapping was used to test for statistical differences. There were 172 patients included in this study. The difference in costs related to wound care between the year before and the year after initial admission to the wound clinic amounted to an average reduction of €2621 (£1873) per patient in the base case analysis. The categories 'general practitioner', 'hospital care', 'mental health care' and 'transport' scored lower, indicating lower costs, in the year after admission to the wound clinic. In this study, only the reimbursement data of patients of one health insurance company, and specifically only those made under the 2006 Dutch Health Insurance Act, were available. Because of the observational design, definitive conclusions cannot be made regarding a demonstrated reduction of costs in the year post admission. Nevertheless, this study is a first attempt of a cost analysis of an equipped outpatient wound clinic as an innovative way of responding to the increasing number of chronic wounds in the Netherlands. The calculations show that savings in wound care are possible. A possible conflict of interest should be mentioned. First author AALM Rondas, PhD student at Maastricht University, is working at the KCWC wound clinic at Venray in the Netherlands as a physician. However, the research data were provided externally by Cooperatie Volksgezondheidszorg (VGZ) and checked by the academic co-authors, none of whom have a conflict of interest."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "The authors have no financial or commercial interest to declare."

For more information on this research see: Cost analysis of one of the first outpatient wound clinics in the Netherlands. Journal of Wound Care, 2015;24(9):426-36 (see also Health Insurance).

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting A.A. Rondas, De Zorggroep, Knowledge Centre of Wound Care, Venlo, Netherlands. Additional authors for this research include J.M. Schols, R.J. Halfens, H.R. Hull, E.E. Stobberingh and S.M Evers.

Keywords for this news article include: Venlo, Europe, Netherlands, Health Insurance.

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