Medical
Cost Offsets Associated with Mental Health Care: A Brief Review
This brief literature review revealed
that mental health treatment has been shown to reduce medical costs
for some populations. The cost offsets are most pronounced for individuals
with chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease, who are treated
for depression. Also, providing a general Medicaid population mental
health treatment through a managed care arrangement has been shown to
reduce subsequent medical service use and costs. However, for individuals
with serious mental illness mental health treatment may not create medical
cost offsets. In fact, for this population some studies have shown that
mental health treatment may actually increase medical costs as symptoms
of mental illness stabilize and these consumers begin to access needed
medical care. Providing mental health services to aged consumers, while
promising, has not yet been shown to create any medical cost offsets.
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Click on the PDF symbol to the left and download the report: " Medical
Cost Offsets Associated with Mental Health Care: A Brief Review."Publication Date: 12/2002. Report Number 3.28.
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