What drives variation in spending for breast cancer patients within geographic regions?

Psychological Determinants of Physician Variation in End-of-Life Treatment Intensity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Synthesis

BACKGROUND

Physicians treating similar patients in similar care-delivery contexts vary in the intensity of life-extending care provided to their patients at the end-of-life. Physician psychological propensities are an important potential determinant of this variability, but the pertinent literature has yet to be synthesized.

OBJECTIVE

Conduct a review of qualitative studies to explicate whether and how psychological propensities could result in some physicians providing more intensive treatment than others.

METHODS

Systematic searches were conducted in five major electronic databases-MEDLINE ALL (Ovid), Embase (Elsevier), CINAHL (EBSCO), PsycINFO (Ovid), and Cochrane CENTRAL (Wiley)-to identify eligible studies (earliest available date to August 2021). Eligibility criteria included examination of a physician psychological factor as relating to end-of-life care intensity in advanced life-limiting illness. Findings from individual studies were pooled and synthesized using thematic analysis, which identified common, prevalent themes across findings.

RESULTS

The search identified 5623 references, of which 28 were included in the final synthesis. Seven psychological propensities were identified as influencing physician judgments regarding whether and when to withhold or de-escalate life-extending treatments resulting in higher treatment intensity: (1) professional identity as someone who extends lifespan, (2) mortality aversion, (3) communication avoidance, (4) conflict avoidance, (5) personal values favoring life extension, (6) decisional avoidance, and (7) over-optimism.

CONCLUSIONS

Psychological propensities could influence physician judgments regarding whether and when to de-escalate life-extending treatments. Future work should examine how individual and environmental factors combine to create such propensities, and how addressing these propensities could reduce physician-attributed variation in end-of-life care intensity.

Intensity of End-of-Life Care in a Cohort of Commercially Insured Women With Metastatic Breast Cancer in the United States

PURPOSE

There is limited evidence on the intensity of end-of-life (EOL) care for women < 65 years old, who account for about 40% of breast cancer deaths in the United States. Using established indicators, we estimated the intensity of EOL care among these women.

METHODS

We used 2000-2014 claims data from a large US insurer to identify women with metastatic breast cancer who, in the last month of their lives, had more than one hospital admission, emergency department visit, or an intensive care unit (ICU) admission and/or used antineoplastic therapy in the last 14 days of life. Using multivariate logistic regression, we assessed whether intensity of EOL care differed by demographic characteristics, socioeconomic factors, or regions.

RESULTS

Adjusted estimates show an increase in EOL ICU admissions between 2000-2003 and 2010-2014 from 14% (95% CI, 10% to 17%) to 23% (95% CI, 20% to 26%) and a small increase in emergency department visits from 10% (95% CI, 7% to 13%) to 12% (95% CI, 9% to 15%), both statistically significant. There was no statistically significant change in the proportions of women experiencing more than one EOL hospitalization (14% in 2010-2014; 95% CI, 11% to 17%) and of those receiving EOL antineoplastic treatment (24% in 2010-2014; 95% CI, 21% to 27%). Living in predominantly mixed, Hispanic, Black, or Asian neighborhoods correlated with more intense care (odds ratio, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.10 to 1.77 for ICU).

CONCLUSION

Consistent with findings in the Medicare population, our results suggest an overall increase in the number of ICU admissions at the EOL over time. They also suggest that patients from non-White neighborhoods receive more intense acute care.

Primary care physician practice styles and patient care: Evidence from physician exits in Medicare

Primary care physicians (PCPs) provide frontline health care to patients in the U.S.; however, it is unclear how their practice styles affect patient care. In this paper, we estimate the long-lasting effects of PCP practice styles on patient health care utilization by focusing on Medicare patients affected by PCP relocations or retirements, which we refer to as "exits." Observing where patients receive care after these exits, we estimate event studies to compare patients who switch to PCPs with different practice style intensities. We find that PCPs have large effects on a range of aggregate utilization measures, including physician and outpatient spending and the number of diagnosed conditions. Moreover, we find that PCPs have large effects on the quality of care that patients receive, and that all of these effects persist for several years. Our results suggest that switching to higher-quality PCPs could significantly affect patients' longer-run health outcomes.

The association of provider and practice factors with HIV antiretroviral therapy adherence

OBJECTIVE

While antiretroviral therapy (ART) is essential to patients with HIV, there is substantial variation in adherence nationally. We assess how provider and practice factors contribute to successful HIV ART adherence.

DESIGN

We used Medicaid Analytic Extract claims from 2008 to 2012. We attributed patients with HIV to the provider that provided the plurality of HIV-related services or primary care in a given year and assigned these providers to a medical practice based on the National Provider Identifier registry file. We fit successive linear hierarchical models with patient, provider, and practice characteristics to partition the variation in adherence driven by each factor. Our unit of analysis was the patient-year.

SETTING

Fourteen US states with the highest HIV prevalence.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 111 013 patient-years representing 60 496 Medicaid enrollees living with HIV attributed to 4930 providers and 1960 practices.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE

Percentage of year individual patients were adherent to an ART regimen.

RESULTS

Provider and practice random effects jointly explained 6.8% of variation in adherence with patient differences accounted for 45.2% of the variation. Patients seen by generalists and other specialists had a 1.6 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.6-2.5] and 5.1 (95% CI: 4.1-6.1) percentage point greater adherence than those seen by infectious disease specialists (P < 0.001). Every additional year a patient saw the same provider was associated with a 6% increase in adherence (95% CI: 5.7-6.3).

CONCLUSION

There is substantial variation in ART adherence attributable to providers and practices and between provider specialties. To improve ART adherence for patients living with HIV, structural aspects of care should be considered.

What drives variation in spending for breast cancer patients within geographic regions?

OBJECTIVE

To estimate and describe factors driving variation in spending for breast cancer patients within geographic region.

DATA SOURCE

Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database from 2009-2013.

STUDY DESIGN

The proportion of variation in monthly medical spending within geographic region attributed to patient and physician factors was estimated using multilevel regression models with individual patient and physician random effects. Using sequential models, we estimated the contribution of differences in patient and disease characteristics or use of cancer treatment modalities to patient-level and physician-level variance in spending. Services associated with high spending physicians were estimated using linear regression.

DATA EXTRACTION METHOD

A total of 20 818 women with a breast cancer diagnosis in 2010-2011.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We observed substantial between-patient and between-provider variation in spending following diagnosis and at the end-of-life. Immediately following diagnosis, 48% of between-patient and 31% of between-physician variation were driven by differences in delivery of cancer treatment modalities to similar patients. At the end-of-life, patients of high spending physicians had twice as many inpatient days, double the chemotherapy spending, and slightly more hospice days.

CONCLUSIONS

Similar patients receive very different treatments, which yield significant differences in spending. Efforts to reduce unwanted variation may need to target treatment choices within patient-doctor discussions.