The impact of new cardiovascular device technology on health care costs.

摘要

Drug-eluting coronary stents (DESs) are widely used and entail sizeable Medicare hospital expenditures. However, the overall cost impact of DESs has not been well quantified. A clear understanding of how new technologies like DESs affect health care expenditures can provide insight into national trends in health care cost growth, of which new technology is presumably the leading driver. New technology may not only increase costs by being more expensive than previous treatments, but also by changing the patterns of care for chronic disease. Accordingly, we sought to assess the overall impact of DESs on Medicare expenditures in a nationally representative cohort of Medicare beneficiaries with coronary artery disease (CAD).