HLTH 4530 Week 1 Cost Comparison Paper Example

Course	HLTH 4530 Healthcare Economics From a Population Health Perspective
Week	Week 1
Paper type	Cost comparison
Length	About 1,270 words, 7 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Walden University
Program	BS in Public Health
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for HLTH 4530 Week 1

Whose Ledger? Clinic Follow-Up Versus Video Visits for Adults With Diabetes in a Rural Clinic Network, Costed First From the Network's Budget and Then From the Households It Serves

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4530: Healthcare Economics From a Population Health Perspective

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title asks the perspective question before naming the options, which signals that the comparison's answer will depend on which ledger is read.

Whose Ledger? Clinic Follow-Up Versus Video Visits for Adults With Diabetes in a Rural Clinic Network, Costed First From the Network's Budget and Then From the Households It Serves

Perspective

This comparison is made from two perspectives, stated before any cost appears. The first is the budget of a composite rural clinic network, Prairie Line Health, which runs five primary care clinics across three counties and sees about 2,400 adults with type 2 diabetes for routine follow-up every three months. The second is the households those adults belong to. The question is which option costs less for a routine quarterly follow-up visit: an in-person visit at a clinic, or a scheduled video visit from home.

Naming the perspective first matters because cost is not one number. A cost to the network is a cost that appears in its accounts; a cost to a household is time, travel and connectivity that never appears there. A national expert panel that updated cost-effectiveness methods advises presenting a payer-and-provider view next to a wider societal view, with an impact inventory that lists consequences falling outside medical care as well as inside it (Sanders et al., 2016). This paper follows the spirit of that advice at a smaller scale.

What this page is doingDeclaring the perspective before the table tells the reader whose costs are being counted and why the verdict might change.

The Two Options

In-person follow-up: the patient drives to the nearest clinic, checks in, has vital signs and a foot check taken by a medical assistant and sees a nurse practitioner for about 20 minutes. Laboratory tests are drawn the same day.

Video follow-up: the patient joins a scheduled video visit from home, for about 15 minutes, using a phone or computer. Blood pressure and glucose readings are reported from home devices. Laboratory tests are drawn at a separate visit to a clinic or partner laboratory when due, typically every other quarter.

The Cost Categories

The table lists categories, not totals, because several network costs depend on contracts and staffing that vary between organizations. What matters for the comparison is the direction and rough size of each difference.

Table 1

Cost Categories per Routine Follow-Up Visit, With Source or Estimate

Cost category	In-person visit	Video visit	Basis \|
Clinician time	About 20 minutes	About 15 minutes	Estimate from the network's visit templates \|
Medical assistant time for rooming and vitals	About 15 minutes	About 5 minutes for pre-visit call	Estimate from the network's workflow \|
Room and equipment use	Exam room for the visit length	None at the clinic	Estimate \|
Scheduling and front-desk staff	Check-in and checkout	Scheduling plus a pre-visit connection test	Estimate; video adds a step \|
Video platform license	None	Annual license spread across visits	Estimate; varies by vendor contract \|
Household travel	Round-trip mileage at about 76 cents a mile	None for the visit itself	IRS (2026) business mileage rate as a proxy for full vehicle cost \|
Household time away from paid work	Travel time plus waiting plus visit, valued at about $24.51 an hour	Visit time only	BLS (2025) median hourly wage, all occupations \|
Household connectivity	None	A device with video and a data plan or home broadband	Pew Research Center (2025): 71% of rural adults report home broadband \|

Rows marked "estimate" rest on the network's own schedules and contracts, which are composite; rows with a source use published figures only as unit prices.

The Network's Ledger

From the network's budget, the two options are closer than they first appear. A video visit saves some clinician time and most of the medical assistant's rooming time, and it frees an exam room. Against those savings, the network pays an annual platform license and adds a scheduling step: a pre-visit call to test the connection and collect home readings. The network also loses the same-day laboratory draw, so some patients need a separate laboratory visit every other quarter, which brings back rooming and phlebotomy time on those occasions.

Fixed costs complicate the picture further. Clinic rooms, buildings and salaried staff are paid whether or not a visit happens in person. A video visit frees an exam room for another patient only if the network has a waiting list to fill it. If clinics already have empty slots, the saved room time has little budget value. On the network's ledger alone, then, video visits are likely to be modestly cheaper per visit when demand is high and roughly equal, or slightly more expensive once the license is included, when it is not.

The Households' Ledger

Adding household rows changes the comparison sharply. For a patient who lives 25 miles from the nearest clinic, an in-person visit means a 50-mile round trip. At 76 cents a mile, the IRS business rate used here as a stand-in for the full cost of running a car (Internal Revenue Service [IRS], 2026), that trip costs about $38. The trip, the wait and the visit together may take two and a half hours. If those hours come out of paid work at the national median wage of $24.51 an hour (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2025), the time is worth about $61. The in-person visit therefore costs that household roughly $99 before any copayment. A video visit costs the same household 15 to 30 minutes of time, about $6 to $12 at the same wage, and no travel.

These figures are illustrations for one distance, not averages for the network. They are consistent in direction with a study of a university telemedicine program, which found that specialty consultations by video saved patients an average of 278 miles, 245 minutes and $156 in travel costs per consultation (Dullet et al., 2017). Those were specialty visits over long distances, so the savings for primary care follow-up nearer home would be smaller, but the pattern is the same: the largest savings from video care fall on the household side of the ledger.

The Cost the Video Option Assumes

The video option quietly assumes that the household already has a working device and a connection good enough for video. Pew Research Center (2025) reports that 71% of rural adults say they have home broadband, and 20% are smartphone dependent, meaning they rely on a phone for internet access without home broadband. For a household with neither, the video visit carries a cost the table cannot show well: a data plan, a borrowed device or a trip to a place with a signal. For those households, the video option may be more expensive than the clinic, or not available at all.

Which Option Costs Less, From Each Perspective

From the network's budget, video follow-up is roughly cost-neutral to modestly cheaper, depending on whether freed clinic capacity is used and on the platform license. From the households' perspective, video follow-up is substantially cheaper for those who live far from a clinic and already have connectivity, and may be costlier or impossible for those who do not. Combining the two ledgers, video follow-up costs less overall for most patients in a rural network, but the saving is concentrated in households, not in the network's accounts.

That split has a practical consequence. A network deciding on its own budget alone may see little reason to expand video follow-up, even though the largest benefits fall on its patients. Counting only the network's ledger would understate the value of the option to the population it serves.

Limits

The network and its workflows are composite, so the clinician and staff times are estimates. The comparison covers costs only, not whether glycemic control or complications differ between the two options, which a full economic evaluation would need. And it treats each visit separately, while in practice a network would mix the two, using in-person visits when examinations or laboratory tests are due.

References

Dullet, N. W., Geraghty, E. M., Kaufman, T., Kissee, J. L., King, J., Dharmar, M., Smith, A. C., & Marcin, J. P. (2017). Impact of a university-based outpatient telemedicine program on time savings, travel costs, and environmental pollutants. Value in Health, 20(4), 542-546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jval.2017.01.014

Internal Revenue Service. (2026). Standard mileage rates. https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/standard-mileage-rates

Pew Research Center. (2025, November 20). Internet, broadband fact sheet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/

Sanders, G. D., Neumann, P. J., Basu, A., Brock, D. W., Feeny, D., Krahn, M., Kuntz, K. M., Meltzer, D. O., Owens, D. K., Prosser, L. A., Salomon, J. A., Sculpher, M. J., Trikalinos, T. A., Russell, L. B., Siegel, J. E., & Ganiats, T. G. (2016). Recommendations for conduct, methodological practices, and reporting of cost-effectiveness analyses: Second Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. JAMA, 316(10), 1093-1103. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.12195

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025). Occupational employment and wage statistics: May 2025 national estimates, all occupations [Data set]. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

The Walden HLTH 4530 Week 1 instructions

The opening paper asks students to compare the costs of two ways of delivering the same health service, and the first instruction is usually to state a perspective. Graders want to know whose costs are being counted before any numbers appear, because a hospital budget, a payer and a household see different costs. Most prompts expect a table of cost categories for each option, with every row either sourced or labeled as an estimate with reasoning. Students then explain whether the cheaper option changes when a second perspective is added. A conclusion states which option costs less from each perspective, not in general. The paper need not measure health outcomes; this is a cost comparison, not a full economic evaluation. Sources typically include published methods guidance and data for unit prices such as wages or mileage. Inventing precise local prices without saying so undermines the whole comparison.

Inside the HLTH 4530 Week 1 example

The paper opens by naming its two perspectives and citing the Second Panel's recommendation to report health-sector and societal results side by side. A short section describes the two options, a 20-minute clinic visit with same-day laboratory work and a 15-minute video visit with home readings. The cost table follows, eight rows with a basis column. The network's ledger is then read: savings in clinician and rooming time against a license and an added scheduling step, with fixed costs and empty slots muting the gain. The household ledger works one example, a 25-mile trip, through the IRS mileage rate and the BLS median wage to about $99, and compares it with a few dollars for video; Dullet and colleagues' telemedicine study confirms the direction. A section on connectivity uses Pew figures on rural broadband and smartphone dependence. The conclusion gives a verdict for each perspective, and three limits close the paper.

Reading the HLTH 4530 Week 1 rubric

Rubrics for this first economics paper generally reward a stated perspective, a structured cost inventory, transparent sourcing and a conclusion tied to perspective. The perspective row is often decisive: a paper that compares "cost" without saying whose loses the analytical core of the assignment. The cost table is judged on completeness of categories, including costs that fall outside the organization, such as travel and lost work time. Sourcing earns credit when each figure is either cited or explicitly labeled as an estimate, and loses it when invented precision appears without comment. Graders look for an explanation of fixed versus variable costs, since a freed exam room has value only if it is used. The conclusion should state a result for each perspective and explain why they differ. APA mechanics include government data sets, a dated fact sheet and a JAMA consensus statement.

HLTH 4530 Week 1 help from the desk

First papers in this course usually go wrong by declaring one option cheaper without saying for whom. A video visit can be cheaper for a family and costlier for a clinic, and a paper that misses that has missed the lesson. Another frequent problem is a table of precise prices with no sources, which reads as guesswork. Students also forget the costs that the cheaper option quietly assumes, such as a device and a data plan. Before submitting, write your perspective in your first paragraph. List cost categories before attaching any numbers. Label every figure with its source or the word estimate. Work at least one household example with real unit prices. End with a verdict for each perspective. A custom comparison can examine another pair, such as home dialysis against center dialysis or mobile vaccination against clinic vaccination.

Get a HLTH 4530 Week 1 example written to your instructions

Send the prompt and rubric for your week and the two options your section compares, and the comparison is built on those two, not on the pair shown here. The desk sends the first one free, within 24 to 48 hours. This clinic network is fictional; a real service named in your prompt can stand in for it without changing the method.

More HLTH 4530 papers and BS in Public Health samples

HLTH 4530 Week 1 questions, answered

Where can I find a free HLTH 4530 Week 1 sample paper?

A complete Week 1 cost comparison of clinic and video diabetes follow-up, with a perspective statement, an eight-row cost table and five references, can be read here with marginal notes on each section.

What perspectives does the HLTH 4530 Week 1 example use?

It compares costs first from the rural clinic network's budget and then from the households of its patients, following advice to report health-sector and societal perspectives side by side.

Which option is cheaper in the HLTH 4530 Week 1 example?

For the network, the two are roughly equal or video is modestly cheaper; for households far from a clinic with internet access, video is much cheaper, saving about $99 on a 50-mile round trip.

How are household travel and time costs valued?

Travel uses the IRS 2026 business mileage rate of 76 cents a mile as a stand-in for vehicle costs, and time uses the BLS May 2025 median wage of $24.51 an hour.

What does the video option assume?

It assumes a working device and a connection good enough for video. Pew reports 71% of rural adults have home broadband, so some households face extra costs or cannot use it.