Quantitative Issues in Cancer Research Working Seminar

Jonathan Luu
Doctoral Student, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University

“Analyzing Longitudinal Health Costs Data Subject to Mortality”

ABSTRACT: In the palliative care setting, costs and healthcare utilization are two common outcomes of interest. Investigators are often interested in the costs of palliative care itself, or the association between palliative care and standard hospital care costs. However, cost data typically follows a semi-continuous distribution, with a large concentration of zero values and a right skewed distribution of positive values. I will discuss the types of analyses used for these types of studies in the longitudinal and non-longitudinal contexts, the types of costs studies focus on, the questions they seek to answer, and provide some simulation results and generated longitudinal cost trajectories.