The economic impact of ophthalmic services for persons with diabetes in the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia: 1993–1996
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: If undetected and untreated, diabetic retinopathy can lead to severe vision loss and irreversible blindness, imposing both clinical and economic costs to patients and society. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine both the direct and indirect costs of providing ophthalmic, social and rehabilitative services for persons with diabetic eye disease. METHODS: Persons with diabetes and seen by ophthalmologists in the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia were ascertained from provincial health records for the years 1993-1996, inclusive. In addition, utilization data from community and blindness rehabilitation agencies located throughout the Province of Nova Scotia for the same time period were also obtained and analyzed. A cost-of-illness analysis of ophthalmic and additional services for persons with diabetes was then performed using the available data sources. RESULTS: The total cost of direct and indirect ophthalmic, disability and rehabilitative care for persons with diabetes mellitus in Nova Scotia over the study period, 1993-1996, was estimated to be CDN $10,521,816.58. Direct costs amounted to CDN $1,416,355.05 (13.46%), indirect costs due to lost productivity reached CDN $5,072,831.85 (48.22%), rehabilitation services cost CDN $251,204.08 (2.38%), disability payments amounted to CDN $979,992.00 (9.32%), while lost wages due to disability payments measured a further CDN $2,801,433.60 (26.62% of total costs). CONCLUSIONS: Over the period reviewed, ophthalmic costs rose by a factor 3.2 greater than that observed for goods and services captured by the Canadian Consumer Price Index. Further analyses over a longer follow-up period are required to definitively establish whether or not there is a long-term upward trend in ophthalmic costs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".