TY - JOUR AU - Frank,Richard G. AU - Berndt,Ernst R. AU - Busch,Alisa B. TI - Quality-Constant Price Indexes for the Ongoing Treatment of Schizophrenia: An Exploratory Study JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10022 PY - 2003 Y2 - October 2003 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10022 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10022.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Richard Frank Department of Health Care Policy Harvard Medical School 180 Longwood Avenue Boston, MA 02115 Tel: 617/432-0178 Fax: 617/432-1219 E-Mail: frank@hcp.med.harvard.edu Ernst R. Berndt MIT Sloan School of Management 100 Main Street, E62-518 Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: 617/253-2665 Fax: 617-227-0880 E-Mail: eberndt@mit.edu Alisa Busch Harvard University E-Mail: abusch@hcp.med.harvard.edu AB - Health care expenditures have been increasing sharply in the last ten years, with spending on mental health disorders being particularly prominent. Over the same time period, a number of new antipsychotic medications have been added to the armamentarium for treatment of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia. Due in part to the sharply increased expenditures by Medicaid on mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, controversies have arisen as to the use of these more costly innovative medications, particularly their impact on the annualized cost of treating patients. Using Medicaid data on 12,864 person years from two counties in Florida over the 1994-95 to 1999-2000 time period, in this study we address three issues: (i) On a per person year basis, what is happening over time to the mental health-related costs of treating schizophrenia? (ii) How is the composition and quality of care changing over time? and (iii) Holding quality of care constant, on a per person year basis, by how much are the costs for the ongoing treatment of schizophrenia changing? We find that unadjusted for changes in quality of care over time, the annualized costs for the ongoing treatment of schizophrenia per person have increased about 0.5% per year. The composition of treatments for schizophrenia has changed substantially over this six-year time period, toward more intensive use of atypical antipsychotics, and away from psychotherapy. Holding treatment quality type and patient characteristics constant over time, mean treatment costs have fallen about 5.5% per year between 1994-1995 and 1999-2000. ER -