This book is a thorough, balanced, and insightful study of the present status and future direction of health care economics and its far-reaching ramifications. Health Economics provides exhaustive analyses of such major issues as cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, quality enhancement, and technology assessment.

Part One presents a basic overview of cost analysis, production functions, and provider cost behavior. Part Two considers economic models of physicians and hospital behavior, and recent changes in methods for paying physicians. Part Three focuses on employee cost sharing, HMOs, gatekeepers to contain utilization, and the use of case managers in long-term care. Part four looks at equity, social welfare, and the unique problems of urban medical centers. Part Five focuses on consumer information, quality measurement, and health manpower policies for nonphysician providers. Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis is reviewed in Part Six. The last part summarizes major future policy options and suggests a number of mixed strategies, including capitation. In short, "Health EconomicS" provides policy makers, health care providers, and students with the analytical tools needed to effectively balance efficiency and quality.

Covering a wide range of topics in medical economics, the author provides a comprehensive study of cost containment and financial management. The issues of health care competition, regulation, marketing, and the impact of health finances on the quality of care are addressed.

Eastaugh provides a blend of descriptive and prescriptive economics, as well as a thorough examination of our current fiscal and monetary policies and problems. With an eye to the impact of special interest politics, he shows the difficulties in--and the necessity of--surmounting our fiscal, educational, trade, productivity, and health care accessibility deficits. This synthesis of currently available information will be invaluable in public administration and public finance courses, as well as public policy programs.

This book is a thorough, balanced, and insightful study of what is happening and what should be happening in health care financing. Americans want unlimited access to the best care at affordable prices. Fiscal pressures in American health care point in all different directions, like a pile of jackstraws. This important book analyzes how new payment incentives stimulate planned competition or reregulation; and the far-reaching impact these changes have on hospitals, physicians, long-term care facilities, HMOs, public health clinics, and multihospital systems. Tools for survival include better financial planning, productivity improvement, better scheduling systems, and total quality management.

Steven R. Eastaugh begins his book with a general overview of cost management, accounting, product-line selection, and new payment incentives. Part II provides an in-depth survey of fiscal trends in long-term care, managed care, HMOs, and PPOs. Part III analyzes five basic strategies that a provider may consider; with special focus on market analysis, diversification, and pricing. The next part reviews physician payment options, the new Medicare 1992 payment systems for hospitals and physicians, and cost analysis of hospital patient care, research, and education. Part V considers productivity enhancement methods, incentives to assist productivity programs, and the Deming method of total quality management. Part VI focuses on investment, financing, and capital structure decisions in health care institutions and also in large multifacility systems. The last part summarizes major strategies for success in the 1990s, future policy alternatives, and suggests a number of alternative roads to universal entitlement and national health care reform. As Eastaugh suggests in this book, Our health system faces . . . immense opportunity and danger in a reformation on four fronts: access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of life. The challenge for providers and managers during this period of unparalleled opportunity is to win a clear victory on all four fronts, and not erode either access or quality in the name of efficiency. The range of coverage in Health Care Finance is extremely wide and detailed--making it essential and useful reading for health care professionals and students alike.

Eastaugh provides a blend of descriptive and prescriptive economics, as well as a thorough examination of our current fiscal and monetary policies and problems. With an eye to the impact of special interest politics, he shows the difficulties in--and the necessity of--surmounting our fiscal, educational, trade, productivity, and health care accessibility deficits. This synthesis of currently available information will be invaluable in public administration and public finance courses, as well as public policy programs.

This book is a thorough, balanced, and insightful study of the present status and future direction of health care economics and its far-reaching ramifications. Health Economics provides exhaustive analyses of such major issues as cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, quality enhancement, and technology assessment.

Part One presents a basic overview of cost analysis, production functions, and provider cost behavior. Part Two considers economic models of physicians and hospital behavior, and recent changes in methods for paying physicians. Part Three focuses on employee cost sharing, HMOs, gatekeepers to contain utilization, and the use of case managers in long-term care. Part four looks at equity, social welfare, and the unique problems of urban medical centers. Part Five focuses on consumer information, quality measurement, and health manpower policies for nonphysician providers. Cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis is reviewed in Part Six. The last part summarizes major future policy options and suggests a number of mixed strategies, including capitation. In short, "Health EconomicS" provides policy makers, health care providers, and students with the analytical tools needed to effectively balance efficiency and quality.