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A GRIT methodology (Generation of Regional Input- Output Tables) to generate and analyze regional input-output tables is applied for a small, middle-income nation, where the single national input-output table is partitioned into numerous regional tables. Missing values data are imputed using an evolutionary stochastic population-based nature-inspired optimization algorithm with self-adapting control parameters and exogenous superior data are introduced as well. A nonsurvey study is carried for each regional economy by computing various multipliers, such as output, income, value-added, employment, and import multipliers, and outlining financial properties, development, and interconnections of the various regions in Slovenia. Finally, the effects of financing the regional healthcare sectors are examined. Empirical evidence that healthcare industry sectors are extraordinarily important at the regional level and thus necessary to deliver a favorable impact on the national production of Slovenia in future, can be used for forthcoming economic policies planning at regional and national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are rare malignancies characterised by its capacity to synthesise and secrete monoamines, due to its neuroendocrine origin. Its varied locations and symptoms have traditionally been responsible for extended delays in their diagnosis. The interest of this study was to characterise the patient population diagnosed with NETs in Spain and to revise how the disease is managed, together with the hospitalisation costs of these patients. Methods The database included records of all patients diagnosed with a NET between 2010 and 2015. Admission records were used to evaluate hospitalisation, disease management data and costs, and single-patient files were used to characterise the population. Results Nine Thousand One Hundred Twenty patients were diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour between 2010 and 2015, with a 2 fold increase in the diagnosis rate over the study period. 42.25% of the patients were females, while 57.75% were males, and mean diagnosis age was 62.58 years (SD = 14.65). Considering all the registered neuroendocrine neoplasms, 46.86% of the patients had malignant well-differentiated NETs, 32.02% had a malignant poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma and 42.93% of patients developed metastatic NETs. In addition, 18.59% of patients were diagnosed with benign well-differentiated NETs. The most common tumour sites were the bronchus, lung and other sites, including pancreatic tumours; metastasis was found in the liver and distant lymph nodes. Pancreatic resection was the most common surgical procedure utilised in these patients, summing 19% of total expenses, the injection of an unspecified therapeutic substance (including targeted therapies) was registered in 11.40% of admissions, while chemotherapy was registered in only 6.85% of admissions. The annual healthcare cost of NETs was €15,373,961, corresponding to €9092 per patient. Conclusions The implementation of standard diagnosis procedures should be prioritised, with a focus on the pancreas and lung, and taking into account that 42.93% of the patients develop a metastatic tumour. The presence of comorbidities and multimorbidities should be considered in order to develop more efficient disease management protocols.

Liver fluke infection (fascioliasis) is a parasitic disease which affects the health and welfare of ruminants. It is a concern for the livestock industry and is considered as a growing threat to the industry because changing climatic conditions are projected to be more favorable to increased frequency and intensity of liver fluke outbreaks. Recent reports highlighted that the incidence and geographic range of liver fluke has increased in the UK over the last decade and estimated to increase the average risk of liver fluke in the UK due to increasing temperature and rainfall. This paper explores financial impacts of the disease with and without climate change effects on Scottish livestock farms using a farm-level economic model. The model is based on farming system analysis and uses linear programming technique to maximize farm net profit within farm resources. Farm level data from a sample of 160 Scottish livestock farms is used under a no disease baseline scenario and two disease scenarios (with and without climate change). These two disease scenarios are compared with the baseline scenario to estimate the financial impact of the disease at farm levels. The results suggest a 12% reduction in net profit on an average dairy farm compared to 6% reduction on an average beef farm under standard disease conditions. The losses increase by 2-fold on a dairy farm and 6-fold on a beef farm when climate change effects are included with disease conditions on farms. There is a large variability within farm groups with profitable farms incurring relatively lesser economic losses than non-profitable farms. There is a substantial increase in number of vulnerable farms both in dairy (+20%) and beef farms (+27%) under the disease alongside climate change conditions.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has created widespread harm and disruption. Countries have implemented unprecedented measures to protect the lives and livelihoods of their inhabitants. The scope and composition of these responses are shaped, in part, by research and analysis about the estimated economic impacts of the COVID‐19 Pandemic and proposed responses to it. This analysis outlines basic features and principles involved in economic studies, specifically economic impact studies and economic evaluations, which have formed a significant part of the ever‐increasing evidence base about COVID‐19. This analysis introduces economic studies in this context, highlighting what they can do, their limitations, and key steps involved in conducting them. It highlights examples of economic analysis focused on COVID‐19 and on health emergencies and disasters more broadly. Knowing how economic studies are conducted, and their limitations, will help introduce how their findings can be a useful, usable, and used part of efforts to tackle this global health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are rare malignancies characterised by its capacity to synthesise and secrete monoamines, due to its neuroendocrine origin. Its varied locations and symptoms have traditionally been responsible for extended delays in their diagnosis. The interest of this study was to characterise the patient population diagnosed with NETs in Spain and to revise how the disease is managed, together with the hospitalisation costs of these patients.Methods: The database included records of all patients diagnosed with a NET between 2010 and 2015. Admission records were used to evaluate hospitalisation, disease management data and costs, and single-patient files were used to characterise the population.Results: Nine Thousand One Hundred Twenty patients were diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour between 2010 and 2015, with a 2 fold increase in the diagnosis rate over the study period. 42.25% of the patients were females, while 57.75% were males, and mean diagnosis age was 62.58 years (SD = 14.65). Considering all the registered neuroendocrine neoplasms, 46.86% of the patients had malignant well-differentiated NETs, 32.02% had a malignant poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma and 42.93% of patients developed metastatic NETs. In addition, 18.59% of patients were diagnosed with benign well-differentiated NETs. The most common tumour sites were the bronchus, lung and other sites, including pancreatic tumours; metastasis was found in the liver and distant lymph nodes. Pancreatic resection was the most common surgical procedure utilised in these patients, summing 19% of total expenses, the injection of an unspecified therapeutic substance (including targeted therapies) was registered in 11.40% of admissions, while chemotherapy was registered in only 6.85% of admissions. The annual healthcare cost of NETs was €15,373,961, corresponding to €9092 per patient.Conclusions: The implementation of standard diagnosis procedures should be prioritised, with a focus on the pancreas and lung, and taking into account that 42.93% of the patients develop a metastatic tumour. The presence of comorbidities and multimorbidities should be considered in order to develop more efficient disease management protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Winter World Masters Games (WWMGs) are a large sports event for 30+-year-old athletes. As there are neither competitive qualification requirements for participants, nor entrance fees for spectators, the event can be considered as a participatory sports tourism event rather than a spectator event. In 2020, the WWMGs were staged in Innsbruck, Tyrol. In this study, we estimate the payoff of the event for the regional economy by assessing the impacts generated by participant spending and organizational expenditure. Furthermore, we discuss the peculiarities of the masters sports concept. Our empirical work is based on three distinct analyses: (1) economic impact analysis of participant spending, (2) cost-benefit analysis of organizational resource flows, and (3) discussion of impacts with experts in a focus group setting. Our results support the previous findings that masters sports events attract rather affluent and consumption-oriented participants. Indeed, the WWMGs were found to have a regional economic impact of €6.18 million and an estimated yield of €4.40 for each publicly subsidized euro. For an audience interested in the economic impact of events, this paper presents a novel method for handling non-normal expenditure distributions and adds to the understanding of how visitor segmentation can be utilized in an assessment of event impacts.

In this paper we report the results of a field test of an economic impact toolkit recently commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The toolkit was created as a guide for food systems organizations to frame issues and collect and analyze data in order to credibly measure economic and other benefits of their initiatives. To test the toolkit, we applied it to an economic contribution study of a local food-buying program in a large regional hospital in Vermont. Our findings indicate that by working with a dedicated and motivated community partner, we were able to agree on the scope and objectives of the project, obtain high-quality data, and enter these data into an input-output model to measure broader economic contributions (Modules 1 though 6 of the toolkit). We experienced difficulty, however, in obtaining data from a sufficient number of the hospital’s vendors to modify the model from its default settings to better reflect local food system actors’ purchase patterns (the subject of Module 7). Our experience suggests that practitioners need to work with community partners and consider which stages of the analysis meet their project objectives; in particular, they should focus on the difficulty and expense of incorporating Module 7. Our implications focus on strategies for decreasing the cost and effort of data collection for Module 7.

In this paper we report the results of a field test of an economic impact toolkit recently commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The toolkit was created as a guide for food systems organizations to frame issues and collect and analyze data in order to credibly measure economic and other benefits of their initiatives. To test the toolkit, we applied it to an economic contribution study of a local food-buying program in a large regional hospital in Vermont. Our findings indicate that by working with a dedicated and motivated community partner, we were able to agree on the scope and objectives of the project, obtain highquality data, and enter these data into an inputoutput model to measure broader economic contributions (Modules 1 though 6 of the toolkit). We experienced difficulty, however, in obtaining data from a sufficient number of the hospital's vendors to modify the model from its default settings to better reflect local food system actors' purchase patterns (the subject of Module 7). Our experience suggests that practitioners need to work with community partners and consider which stages of the analysis meet their project objectives; in particular, they should focus on the difficulty and expense of incorporating Module 7. Our implications focus on strategies for decreasing the cost and effort of data collection for Module 7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate regarding new policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP) has focused on the significant implied changes such policies will have for the national energy system, and the national economy. Less debate, however, has occurred regarding the impact such policies will have on significant fossil fuel producing regions in the country. Such impacts are important to consider, both from an equity and political perspective. If some regions are impacted more than others across a national society, this could create political opposition that could undermine the implementation of such policies. The purpose of this paper is to present one such impact analysis, estimating the potential economic effects the CPP could have on Wyoming, the nation’s largest coal producing state. The paper also highlights how such estimates are heavily dependent on the initial simulation assumptions used to generate them. Using two sources of simulations, from Godby et al. (2015a) , and a later set from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), estimates of the potential impact of the originally proposed CPP rules on Wyoming economy are described. Simulation results are shown to be highly sensitive to how policy is implemented, and modeling assumptions. Regardless of the simulation, however, economic impacts of the CPP are shown to be severe to a producing state like Wyoming, potentially reducing that state’s employment by over 3%, and reducing state revenues by 14% or more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Winter World Masters Games (WWMGs) are a large sports event for 30+-year-old athletes. As there are neither competitive qualification requirements for participants, nor entrance fees for spectators, the event can be considered as a participatory sports tourism event rather than a spectator event. In 2020, the WWMGs were staged in Innsbruck, Tyrol. In this study, we estimate the payoff of the event for the regional economy by assessing the impacts generated by participant spending and organizational expenditure. Furthermore, we discuss the peculiarities of the masters sports concept. Our empirical work is based on three distinct analyses: (1) economic impact analysis of participant spending, (2) cost-benefit analysis of organizational resource flows, and (3) discussion of impacts with experts in a focus group setting. Our results support the previous findings that masters sports events attract rather affluent and consumption-oriented participants. Indeed, the WWMGs were found to have a regional economic impact of €6.18 million and an estimated yield of €4.40 for each publicly subsidized euro. For an audience interested in the economic impact of events, this paper presents a novel method for handling non-normal expenditure distributions and adds to the understanding of how visitor segmentation can be utilized in an assessment of event impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To analyse the occurrence and cost of dry eye disease in Spain in the recent years., Methods: A cross-sectional analysis based on anonymised data from an insurance claims database that includes data from 1997 to 2015 from public and private hospitals and healthcare centres; 36,081 patients were eligible for the study after duplicate elimination. Five ICD9 codes associated with dry eye were used for patient selection, including vitamin A deficiency with xerophthalmic scars of cornea, xerophthalmia due to vitamin A deficiency, keratoconjunctivitis sicca not specified as Sjögren's, dry eye syndrome and keratoconjunctivitis sicca Sjögren's disease., Results: Over 88% of the patients were female, and the mean age was 66 years. Patients with keratoconjunctivitis sicca Sjögren's disease represented more than 89% of all patients and had the highest percentage of women. Both the annual number of patients and the number of admissions have increased exponentially since 1997 raising from 1079 to 3097 and from 1344 to 5938, respectively. The in-hospital length of stay was 9.6 (standard deviation = 11.6) days where more than 65% of the admissions were due to emergencies. Total costs were found to increase from €4.9 to €30.3 million during the study period; in parallel, there was an increase in the mean annual cost per patient, which was on average €7379., Conclusion: Disease incidence is likely to increase due to the influence of modern-day workplace, and it is important to take into account the high economic burden and the large decrease in quality of life in regards to Spanish society and health policies.

Liver fluke infection (fascioliasis) is a parasitic disease which affects the health and welfare of ruminants. It is a concern for the livestock industry and is considered as a growing threat to the industry because changing climatic conditions are projected to be more favorable to increased frequency and intensity of liver fluke outbreaks. Recent reports highlighted that the incidence and geographic range of liver fluke has increased in the UK over the last decade and estimated to increase the average risk of liver fluke in the UK due to increasing temperature and rainfall. This paper explores financial impacts of the disease with and without climate change effects on Scottish livestock farms using a farm-level economic model. The model is based on farming system analysis and uses linear programming technique to maximize farm net profit within farm resources. Farm level data from a sample of 160 Scottish livestock farms is used under a no disease baseline scenario and two disease scenarios (with and without climate change). These two disease scenarios are compared with the baseline scenario to estimate the financial impact of the disease at farm levels. The results suggest a 12% reduction in net profit on an average dairy farm compared to 6% reduction on an average beef farm under standard disease conditions. The losses increase by 2-fold on a dairy farm and 6-fold on a beef farm when climate change effects are included with disease conditions on farms. There is a large variability within farm groups with profitable farms incurring relatively lesser economic losses than non-profitable farms. There is a substantial increase in number of vulnerable farms both in dairy (+20%) and beef farms (+27%) under the disease alongside climate change conditions., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer JN declared a past co-authorship with one of the authors BV to the handling Editor., (Copyright © 2020 Shrestha, Barratt, Fox, Vosough Ahmadi and Hutchings.)

Background: The knowledge of the pathophysiology of Lysosomal Storage Disorders has gradually increased, but information on their incidence is still scarce. The objective of this study was to evaluate the status and use of resources of these disorders in Spain from 1997 to 2015., Methods: Records from 4,999 patients diagnosed with a Lysosomal Storage Disorder were extracted from a Spanish database containing data from public and private hospitals from 1997 to 2015., Results: The database registered 2,441 patients with an LSD in Spain during the study period. Leukodystrophy, Krabbe disease, Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease and sulfatide lipidosis represented, as a group, the most common combination of diseases in Spain, affecting 26% of total patients. The average age of diagnosis of these disorders was 16.7 years. A sex bias was observed in most of the groups, with a proportion of male/female of 60 to 40%. The direct medical cost of Lysosomal Storage Diseases was €5,686 per patient with an average cost per hospital admission of €4,923. Global costs displayed a growing tendency., Conclusion: Contrary to worldwide disease incidence estimations, the group with Krabbe disease registered the highest number of patients in the study period, which makes evident the need for accurate regional disease incidence and patient demographic studies. Altogether, data suggest the need to improve LSDs diagnostic protocols, and support the inclusion of these disorders in standard newborn screening programs., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)