The IHME Disease Expenditure project is an extended effort to measure and assess US health spending by simultaneously splitting personal health care spending into 155 conditions, age and sex groups, and type of care from 1996 to 2013. The expectation is that once this has been done at the US national level, similar subnational and international endeavors can be pursued to better inform policymaking at those levels. Through funding from the Peterson Center on Healthcare, we also measure health spending by payer and quantify the impact of the main drivers of increased expenditure over time. Collaboration with the Peterson Center on Healthcare will enable estimates of future US health spending through 2040 based on past trends and relationships related to population, disease prevalence, service utilization, and costs of care. In addition, we will estimate a series of alternate forecast scenarios intended to highlight how innovation and policy can impact health spending in the future. This extension of the DEX project will maximize its policy relevance and demonstrate its applicability to other countries seeking a better understanding of their own health spending.
The project has begun by establishing methods through a United States proof-of-concept study in hopes of leveraging a data-rich environment and many local experts. The methods and tools developed are flexible to allow for the analysis to be performed for other countries.
Our plan is to disseminate our United States findings through a capstone publication, as well as expand into specific subject areas such as pediatrics. In hopes of leveraging the US results fully, we intend to expand the project subnationally.