AN ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION OF PERIODIC HEALTH EXAMINATION PROGRAMS

Data on Navy, Marine Corps, and Army officers who were retired because of disability are investigated to enable inferences regarding the benefits and costs of alternative periodic health examination strategies. The periodic health screening program is treated on one level as a production function whose output is the ability of the program to detect illness and whose inputs are the frequency of the examinations and the scope of an examination. The parameters of this function are estimated. Then, at a second level, the respective effects of variations in age and variations in the ability of the periodic health screening program to detect illness, upon the rate of serious morbidity in the population, are examined. While the cost differences are substantial between a frequent, thorough program and one with examinations of low frequency and scope, the differences in serious morbidity between the two extremes appear to be negligible for all age groups studied (ages 24 through 48).