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Brenda Spillman

Brenda Spillman



Senior Fellow


Brenda Spillman, a health economist, has more than 20 years' experience designing and conducting health and healthcare-related research projects. Before joining UI in 1998, she was a research fellow at what is now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is a nationally recognized expert on old-age disability and long term care, including nursing home and home-care use, long-term care insurance and public financing, informal caregiving, and projections of service use and cost for the Medicare elderly. Recent work also has focused on chronic disease as an extension of her longstanding interest in better understanding causes of functional improvements in the older population and ways to promote maximum health and functioning through the life course, including through primary prevention and improved disease management.

Spillman's earlier work focused on the nonelderly uninsured, Medicaid, Medicare, and the impact of financing on acute health care utilization. She is an expert in use of a broad range of complex national surveys, Medicare and Medicaid claims, and assessment data. She also has expertise in survey design and development and currently is an investigator and work group leader for the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a new national longitudinal survey of the Medicare elderly funded by the National Institute on Aging.

PhD, Economics, Syracuse University

Areas of expertise

Old age disability and long term care, long term care insurance and public financing, trends and projections of health, disability, and health care costs of the elderly, retirement security

Selected Publications from Brenda Spillman

  • Changes in Elderly Disability Rates and the Implications for Health Care Utilization and Cost
  • Policy Implications of an Annuity Approach to Integrating Long Term Care Financing and Retirement Income
  • The Effect of Longevity on Spending for Acute and Long Term Care
  • Publications by topic:
    Elderly
    Long-term Care
    Health and Health Care
    Long-term Care
    Uninsured/Uncompensated Care
    Medicaid
    Health Insurance and Medicare

    See all publications by Brenda Spillman

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