Dr. Charles Roehrig is a vice president and director of Altarum’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending. A health care economist and econometrician, Roehrig specializes in health sector modeling and analysis.
Dr. Roehrig is the lead designer of the Altarum Health Sector Model (AHSM), which represents the process by which population health status, access to care, and payment rates combine to determine national and state health expenditures. He is currently applying AHSM to the financial analysis of state-level health reform proposals. Previous applications include forecasting national health expenditures in a consumer-driven health care environment (presented to the 2006 National Consumer Driven Health Care Summit) and a study of early retirees who are at risk of losing their employer-sponsored coverage.
Dr. Roehrig is also developing time-series estimates of national expenditures by medical condition. These estimates are benchmarked to official government estimates of personal health expenditures from the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA). Thus they cover spending by the civilian non-institutional population as well as the various institutionalized populations and the military. These estimates will provide policymakers with critical information on trends in spending by medical condition. They will also create the basis for adding medical condition forecasts to AHSM.
Dr. Roehrig has many years of experience in forecasting health workforce supply and requirements. He is the lead designer of a number of models used by the U.S. Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr), including the Physician Supply Model (PSM) and Physician Demand Model (PDM). He recently developed physician supply and requirements estimates for the State of Michigan.
ther current research interests include: the impact of overall economic performance on the health sector; modeling the determinants of spending by medical condition; modeling individual preferences for alternative benefit designs; and health insurer risk-based capital requirements.
Dr. Roehrig has lectured in economics at the University of Michigan and served as a research associate of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. In addition to his applied research, he has published in the field of theoretical econometrics in academic journals such as Econometrica and the Journal of Econometrics.
Dr. Roehrig holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, a master of science degree in statistics from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Amherst College.
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Latest Altarum data shows that total health spending rose 5.2 percent in September compared with a year ago. The growth was led by higher hospital spending. But health price inflation remained relatively flat - up only 2.1 percent compared with a year ago and consistent with trends this year.