Whether tiered medical care system is effective in saving costs?Cost savings estimation of the medical care system after tiered optimization in Zhejiang Province based on system dynamics model / 中国卫生政策研究

ABSTRACT

The experience of various countries proves that the hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model can lead to reasonable resources allocation and utilization, however, the waste of China''s disordered treatment model has not been estimated.Nowadays, it is very important to establish a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system during China''s healthcare system reform.Therefore, it is necessary to estimate the benefit the reform may bring.We take Zhejiang Province as an example, and adopted the system dynamics model to build the health delivery system, to emulate the hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model and the disordered model, and to evaluate the benefit.Results showed that if first option at the primary health institutions increased 10%, it could save 0.251 billion yuan, and if increased 15%, it could save 0.39 billion yuan.If the first option at the primary health institution reached 72.35% and the treatment in county reached 90%, the outpatient in tertiary hospital could reduce by 13 million, and those in primary healthcare institutions could increase by 74 million yuan.The direct healthcare cost could reduce 3.016 billion Yuan.