Purpose Asthma causes a high economic burden on the health-care system. Previous research on the cost of asthma in Abu Dhabi was in 2011 and revealed high medical costs. This work aimed to estimate both direct and indirect costs of asthma with trend analysis over a period of four years. Patients and Methods All data on medical costs, work absenteeism, and mortality were collected from the e-claims system of the national health insurance database. Medical costs included medication use, emergency room (ER) visits, non-ER visits, outpatient care, and hospitalization from 2015 to 2018. Indirect costs in terms of work absenteeism were calculated by multiplying the average daily income per employer by the number of workdays missed due to sick leaves documented in the database in 2019. Results Over the years, the total medical costs increased from AED 161,843,698 in 2015 to AED 206,548,620 in 2018. The largest contribution was attributed to outpatient care, while hospitalization accounted for the smallest proportion of the total costs in 2018. Likewise, the mean annual per-patient cost in 2015 was AED 1119 and increased to AED 1162 in 2018. Indirect costs were estimated to be AED 27,482,319 resulting from 30,948 sick leaves in the year 2019 only. Conclusion Asthma is a cause for huge expenditure from the health-care system perspective in Abu Dhabi. It also has a large impact on society through work absenteeism. Costs of asthma management are increasing every year, which suggests a call-to-action to improve the disease management status using cost-effective strategies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.