Courtney Harold Van Houtven

Journal article Chronic Illn · March 2010 Featured Publication OBJECTIVES: To describe the informal care network of US veterans referred to home and community-based services (Homemaker Home Health services, H/HHA, or Home-Based Primary Care, HBPC) at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), including: quanti ... Full text Link to item Cite

Economic burden for informal caregivers of lung and colorectal cancer patients.

Journal article Oncologist · 2010 Featured Publication BACKGROUND: Informal care provides many benefits to cancer patients, but can be costly to caregivers. This study quantified the economic burden for informal caregivers of lung cancer (LC) and colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, examining differences by cance ... Full text Link to item Cite

Caring for mom and neglecting yourself? The health effects of caring for an elderly parent.

Journal article Health Econ · September 2009 Featured Publication We examine the physical and mental health effects of providing care to an elderly mother on the adult child caregiver. We address the endogeneity of the selection in and out of caregiving using an instrumental variable approach, using the death of the care ... Full text Link to item Cite

Is a home-care network necessary to access the Medicare hospice benefit?

Journal article J Palliat Med · August 2009 Featured Publication OBJECTIVE: To test whether the presence of an informal or formal care network in the home leads to different hospice utilization patterns near death. To examine how the informal care relationship affects hospice use patterns. DATA SOURCES: Medicare Current ... Full text Link to item Cite

Home health care and patterns of subsequent VA and medicare health care utilization for veterans.

Journal article Gerontologist · October 2008 Featured Publication PURPOSE: The Veterans Affairs or VA health care system is in the process of significantly expanding home health care (HHC) nationwide. We describe VA HHC use in 2003 for all VA HHC users from 2002; we examine whether VA utilization across a broad spectrum ... Full text Link to item Cite

Informal care and Medicare expenditures: testing for heterogeneous treatment effects.

Journal article J Health Econ · January 2008 Featured Publication We estimate the effect of informal care on Medicare expenditures not only for care provided by children but also by the source of informal care (sons versus daughters, children versus others) and recipient characteristics (marital status). Our conceptual f ... Full text Link to item Cite

What length of hospice use maximizes reduction in medical expenditures near death in the US Medicare program?

Journal article Soc Sci Med · October 2007 Featured Publication Hospices have been expected to reduce health expenditures since their addition to the US Medicare benefit package in the early-1980s, but the literature on their ability to do so is mixed. The contradictory findings noted in previous studies may be due to ... Full text Link to item Cite

Perceived discrimination and reported delay of pharmacy prescriptions and medical tests.

Journal article J Gen Intern Med · July 2005 Featured Publication BACKGROUND: Access to health care varies according to a person's race and ethnicity. Delaying treatment is one measure of access with important health consequences. OBJECTIVE: Determine whether perceptions of unfair treatment because of race or ethnicity a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Home and community-based waivers for disabled adults: program versus selection effects.

Journal article Inquiry · 2005 Featured Publication This paper addresses whether changes in expenditures from participation in a Medicaid home and community-based waiver are due to selection effects or true program effects. We examined North Carolina Medicaid claims data (FY1998 to FY2000) for disabled or b ... Full text Link to item Cite

Informal care and health care use of older adults.

Journal article J Health Econ · November 2004 Featured Publication Informal care by adult children is a common form of long-term care for older adults and can reduce medical expenditures if it substitutes for formal care. We address how informal care by all children affects formal care, which is critically important given ... Full text Link to item Cite

Does prospective payment reduce inpatient length of stay?

Journal article Health Econ · July 2002 Featured Publication A change in payment mechanism for inpatient care from per diem to per episode creates two incentives - a marginal and an average price effect - to change length of stay. The decrease in marginal price per day to zero should reduce the length of stay, while ... Full text Link to item Cite