Grant: Project Grant

It is a well-known fact that a small number of patients incur a relatively large amount of health care costs. This finding has attracted the attention of policymakers who are generally interested in finding ways to decrease costs. There has been some research on these patients but very little on high cost patients with mental disorders and addictions. There has also not been much research that has tried to understand why mental health and addictions high cost patients continue to be high cost users for many years. Using health care data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto Ontario, we will investigate how persistent mental health and addictions high cost patients 18 years of age and older use the health care system. We will define mental health and addictions high cost users as all patients with 50% or more of mental health and addictions-related costs and provide a description of this patient group. Our model will help us understand why some patients remain in the high cost category over time. It will also help us know whether this experience differs by sex, age group, income level and administrative health region. A more detailed understanding of what makes these individuals an expensive population to treat may help reorganize the health care system so that we can address their health needs in an effective and timely way. For example, information on who remains in the high cost category over time can help understand which individuals are more likely to be hospitalized or use the health care system more frequently. This work may also help us design appropriate prevention policies to target different groups of patients with mental disorders and addictions.