Burden of illness in Parkinson's disease

Abstract

This study quantifies direct medical care costs for individual patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and projects total national costs of PD. Anonymous, patient-level data on health care utilization and cost were obtained from Medstat's MarketScan Research Databases. Patients were selected for study if they had either two instances of a diagnosis of PD or one diagnosis and two or more prescriptions for PD-related medication. A control group of persons without PD was selected for comparison. Total annual health care utilization and costs were calculated for both PD patients and controls. A total of 20,016 patients with PD were identified and followed up for an average of 853 days. The mean age of the patients was 73.6 years, and 51.2% were women. Total annual direct costs were $23,101 (SD 27,529) per patient with PD versus $11,247 (SD 16,486) for controls. The regression-adjusted incremental direct cost of PD versus control was $10,349 (95% confidence interval, 9,053, 11,645). Adding $25,326 in indirect costs, and multiplying by 645,000 cases of PD in the United States, the total cost to the nation is projected to be $23 billion annually. This estimate is higher than most previous studies, with important implications for health care delivery systems worldwide. © 2005 Movement Disorder Society.