title: Guidelines for Measuring Disease Episodes: An Analysis of the Effects on the Components of Expenditure Growth.
abstract: To provide guidelines to researchers measuring health expenditures by disease and compare these methodologies' implied inflation estimates.
  
  
  
  A convenience sample of commercially insured individuals over the 2003 to 2007 period from Truven Health. Population weights are applied, based on age, sex, and region, to make the sample of over 4 million enrollees representative of the entire commercially insured population.
  
  
  
  Different methods are used to allocate medical-care expenditures to distinct condition categories. We compare the estimates of disease-price inflation by method.
  
  
  
  Across a variety of methods, the compound annual growth rate stays within the range 3.1 to 3.9 percentage points. Disease-specific inflation measures are more sensitive to the selected methodology.
  
  
  
  The selected allocation method impacts aggregate inflation rates, but considering the variety of methods applied, the differences appear small. Future research is necessary to better understand these differences in other population samples and to connect disease expenditures to measures of quality.
authors.affiliation: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, DC.
authors.forename: Abe
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dunn
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Duke University, Durham, NC.
authors.forename: Eli
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Liebman
authors.affiliation: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, DC.
authors.forename: Lindsey
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rittmueller
authors.affiliation: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA.
authors.forename: Adam Hale
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Shapiro
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics; D004194:Disease / Q000191:economics*; D004813:Epidemiology / Q000592:standards; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D040841:Resource Allocation / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods
keywords: Health care expenditures; disease episodes; measuring expenditures of treatment