Factors Affecting Healthcare Costs in Manufacturing

摘要

Numerous reviews were conducted on healthcare cost items and the factors that affect them. These reviews were not comprehensive enough to capture the entire objective and did not include the elements of an evidence-based approach. This research presents a quality assessment designed to provide some possible solutions to the increasing effects of healthcare costs among manufacturing companies. The objective of this research is to develop a model that measures direct or insured costs and expands on the work by Paez et al. (2005) in which an estimation of uninsured costs was made. Published articles were obtained using a search of electronic databases and bibliographies of identified articles. The quality assessment of each article was conducted using a predetermined set of criteria. Seven articles satisfied the inclusion criteria adopted for this research. Although real-life study setups and data collection activities exist, many articles lacked healthcare cost categorization. The findings do not include the relationship between factors and the cost of items. Results from the examples used in the automotive and chemical industries helped obtain an estimate of insurance and property damage costs. There appears to be a need for a model that represents the relationship between healthcare cost items and the leading factors. It could make it possible to control and greatly reduce the leading healthcare cost factors. A complete model containing both insured and uninsured costs was developed by combining the models. It built upon the concept of severity introduced by Paez et al. and applied the concept to include insured costs.