There is limited information about the impact of frailty on public payer costs in cardiac surgery. This study aimed to determine quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and costs associated with pre-operative frailty in patients referred for cardiac surgery.

A healthy mouth is an essential ingredient for overall good health, but a Canadian’s access to comprehensive dental care is dependent on their ability to attain private insurance. This paper seeks to estimate the gross and net total cost of two policy options for introducing comprehensive dental care into Canadian Medicare. Using a micro-costing approach for estimating the…

This paper presents a formulaic approach to micro-costing the expected direct clinical cost of a given public dental program in Canada. A micro-costing approach enables policy leaders to create or radically redesign existing public-sector dental programs by projecting the total cost generated by expected clinical demand. Current public dental plans employ heavy restrictions around…

The recent report by Alberta’s Blue ribbon panel on the province’s finances denounced Alberta’s Fee-for-Service (FFS) model as a significant source of inefficiency and cost within the health system, going as far as to suggest legislating a non-FFS model. If pursued, Alberta would be the first province since the start of Canadian Medicare to fully shift away from…

Overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) contributes to childhood and adult obesity and numerous related diseases, including heart disease, strokes, cancers, and type 2 diabetes. It also increases healthcare costs. Sugary drink taxes have been implemented in several countries to curb sugar intake. However, there is a concern that sugary drink taxes are regressive. This…

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an opportunistic bacterial organism resistant to first line antibiotics. Acquisition of MRSA is often classified as either healthcare-associated or community-acquired. It has been shown that both healthcare-associated and community-acquired infections contribute to the spread of MRSA within healthcare facilities. The objective…

The authors aimed to determine the cost effectiveness of initiating treatment early in the disease course (within 2 years of CD diagnosis) vs later in the disease course (more than 2 years after diagnosis). To do so, the authors constructed a Markov model of a hypothetical cohort of patients with CD in Canada to simulate disease progression after initiation of infliximab or adalimumab…

OBJECTIVES: To examine the resource use and healthcare costs for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Alberta, Canada between 2008 and 2016 and model the future costs to 2030.

Little is known about resource use and cost burden of Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) beyond the index event. We examined resource use and care costs during the first and each subsequent year, among patients with incident AMI.

Little is known about the cost burden of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) on healthcare systems. Accordingly, we examined the long-term trends of healthcare costs for AMI in the province of Alberta, Canada.

The recently released Canadian cardiac care quality indicators include 30-day in-hospital mortality and readmission rates after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). We examined long-term trends and provincial variations in these outcomes among acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients.

Eplerenone has been demonstrated as being cost effective for the treatment of patients with systolic heart failure (HF) and mild symptoms in several jurisdictions; however, its cost effectiveness is unknown in the context of Alberta, Canada.