Study Findings from Department of Health Care Management Broaden Understanding of Managed Care (Sensitivity Analysis and Methodological Choices On Health-related Impoverishment Estimates In Cambodia, 2009-17): Managed Care

2022 JUN 06 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Managed Care is the subject of a report. According to news reporting out of Greifswald, Germany, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “The measurement of health expenditure-related impoverishment as a proxy of financial risk protection is regularly used as an indicator of progress towards universal health coverage. However, the use of this indicator is greatly sensitive to analysts’ choices and data sources, making comparisons across time and countries challenging.”

Financial support for this research came from Global Network for Health Financing and Social Health Protection (P4H Network) through the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the Department of Health Care Management, “We report the results of a sensitivity analysis of critical methodological choices in estimating health-related financial impoverishment in Cambodia from 2009 to 2017. We include the following in our analysis: the construction and data sources for consumption aggregates and out-of-pocket health estimates; the use of international and national absolute and relative poverty thresholds (defined by the share of household food consumption); time and regional price adjustment methods and index sources. Marginal changes substantially affected estimates at the national and regional levels among households. In most cases, the choice of poverty thresholds and temporal and regional deflators had a significant effect. An increase of 0.01 USD in the average daily per capita poverty line resulted in relative increases in impoverished incidences of 2.90-2.62% for 2009 and 3.06-2.95% for 2014. From 2013 onwards, estimates for impoverishment in rural areas based on median food consumption were often significantly higher than estimates using official poverty lines. The high sensitivity of the impoverishment indicator cautions against its use in assessing health-related financial hardship and protection, especially with low and absolute poverty lines.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “In the context of low- and middle-income countries, assessing financial hardship in relative terms by using measures such as catastrophic health expenditure, complemented with research on coping strategies and their socio-economic effects on households, may be more conducive to policymaking goals and progress towards achieving universal health coverage.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Sensitivity Analysis and Methodological Choices On Health-related Impoverishment Estimates In Cambodia, 2009-17. Health Policy and Planning, 2022. Health Policy and Planning can be contacted at: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England. (Oxford University Press - http://www.oup.com/; Health Policy and Planning - heapol.oxfordjournals.org)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Steffen Flessa, Univ Greifswald, Dept. of Health Care Management, Friedrich Loeffler Str 70, D-17487 Greifswald, Germany. Additional authors for this research include Adelio Fernandes Antunes, Theepakorn Jithitikulchai, Somil Nagpal and Kimsun Tong.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czac028. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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