Persistence of High Health Care Costs among VA Patients.

<bold>Objectives: </bold>To examine high-cost patients in VA and factors associated with persistence in high costs over time.<bold>Data Sources: </bold>Secondary data for FY2008-2012.<bold>Data Extraction: </bold>We obtained VA and Medicare utilization and cost records for VA enrollees and drew a 20 percent random sample (N = 1,028,568).<bold>Study Design: </bold>We identified high-cost patients, defined as those in the top 10 percent of combined VA and Medicare costs, and determined the number of years they remained high cost over 4 years. We compared sociodemographics, clinical characteristics, and baseline utilization by number of high-cost years and conducted a discrete time survival analysis to predict high-cost persistence.<bold>Principal Findings: </bold>Among 105,703 patients with the highest 10 percent of costs at baseline, 68 percent did not remain high cost in subsequent years, 32 percent had high costs after 1 year, and 7 percent had high costs in all four follow-up years. Mortality, which was 47 percent by end of follow-up, largely explained low persistence. The largest percentage of patients who persisted as high cost until end of follow-up was for spinal cord injury (16 percent).<bold>Conclusion: </bold>Most high-cost patients did not remain high cost in subsequent years, which poses challenges to providers and payers to manage utilization of these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]