Persistence of High Health Care Costs among VA Patients

Objectives. To examine high-cost patients in VA and factors associated with persistence in high costs over time, Data Sources. Secondary data for FY2008-2012. Data Extraction. We obtained VA and Medicare utilization and cost records for VA enrollees and drew a 20 percent random sample (N = 1,028,568). Study Design. We identified high-cost patients, defined as those in the top 10 percent. of combined VA and Medicare costs, and determined the number of years they remained high cost over 4 years. We compared sociodemographics, clinical characteristics, and baseline utilization by number of high-cost years and conducted a discrete time survival analysis to predict high-cost persistence. Principal Findings. Among 105,703 patients with the highest 10 percent of costs at baseline, 68 percent did not remain high cost in subsequent years, 32 percent had high costs after 1 year, and 7 percent had high costs in all four follow-up years. Mortality, which was 47 percent by end of follow-up, largely explained low persistence. The largest percentage of patients who persisted as high cost until end of follow-up was for spinal cord injury (16 percent). Conclusion. Most high-cost patients did not remain high cost in subsequent years, which poses challenges to providers and payers to manage utilization of these patients.