New Study Identifies Asthma Interventions To Reduce Medical and Utilization Costs

A new study found numerous extensively available asthma interventions are linked to reduced medical costs and decreased likelihood of the need for children to go to the hospital.

According to Julie Swann, lead author, and North Carolina State University's department head and professor in the industrial and systems engineering department, this study presents that the quality of life for asthma children could be improved.

The research also found that government spending could be reduced by the implementation of the proactive interventions the authors proposed.

For this study published in the Journal of Asthma, the investigators studied data from 2010 to 2011 on over 70,000 children who had asthma enrolled in Medicaid programs in Michigan and New York.

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A new study found numerous extensively available asthma interventions are linked to reduced medical costs and decreased likelihood of the need for children to go to the hospital.

Focusing on 4 Interventions

The researchers focused on four interventions, which include asthma self-management education or ASME; flu vaccine; the use of spacers, which are inexpensive plastic tubes that enhance the performance of inhalers; and the use of nebulizers, devices that convert fluid drugs into an aerosol that patients can inhale.

Specifically, the study authors evaluated the data to understand the degree to which each of the said interventions was linked to three outcomes: visits to the emergency room due to asthma-related conditions; visits to primary-care doctors because of asthma-related conditions; and hospital confinements due to asthma-related illness.

The researchers also investigated further the extent to which each of the interventions affected costs linked to the asthma medication of every child, and what was indicated in the study as "utilization costs," costs linked to other aspects of asthma treatment of every child like the cost of a visit to the hospital or primary care.

To answer the questions, the study authors plugged the health care data into models that enabled them to separately evaluate each intervention's effect, compared to totally no intervention.

Swann said that one of their work's key findings, "which should be of interest to policymakers," is that all interventions were linked to lower costs of medication and utilization.

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Significant Cost Reduction Found

The department head and professor also said that while the figures varied between states, the cost reductions could be considerable.

For instance, being vaccinated as protection from flu was linked to a 16.4-drop in utilization costs and a 15.6-percent reduction in medication costs for children in New York.

Meanwhile, Pinar Keskinocak, co-author of the study and professor at Georgia tech's School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, said there could be substantial reductions in cost linked to a reasonably low-cost intervention. She added, their results "suggest that ASME training," as well as the use of nebulizers and spacers, are linked to substantial declines too, in both ER visits and hospital admissions.

The co-author, who is also the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems director, added that the flu vaccine helps lessen "the number of visits to a child's primary care provider."

Meanwhile, according to Swann, it is essential to note that "we looked at the impact of these outcomes" distinctly while counting for other treatments.

One would expect that the more of these proactive interventions as a kid, she explained, the greater the positive effect would be expected to see on both these young ones' health, as well as on what Medicaid would be asked in terms of expenditure on their care.

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