Estimating the Economic Burden of Osteoporotic Vertebral Fracture among Elderly Korean Women

Abstract

Objectives : To estimate the economic burden of osteoporotic vertebral fracture (VF) from a societal perspective. Methods : From 2002 to 2004, we identified all National Health Insurance claims records for women W 50 years old with a diagnosis of VF. The first 6-months was defined as a Xclearance period,Ysuch that patients were considered as incident cases if their first claim of fracture was recorded after June 30, 2002. We only included patients with W one claim of a diagnosis of, or prescription for, osteoporosis over 3 years. For each patient, we cumulated the claims amount for the first visit and for the follow-up treatments for 1 year. The hospital charge data from 4 hospitals were investigated to measure the proportion of the non-covered services. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 106 patients from the 4 study sites to measure the out-of-pocket spending outside of hospitals. Results : During 2.5 years, 131,453 VF patients were identified. The patients had an average of 3.38 visits, 0.40 admissions and 6.36 inpatient days. The per capita cost was 1,909,690 Won: 71.5% for direct medical costs, 20.6% for direct non-medical costs and 7.9% for indirect costs. The per capita cost increased with increasing age: 1,848,078 Won for those aged 50-64, 2,084,846 Won for 65-74, 2,129,530 Won for 75-84and 2,121,492 Won for those above 84. Conclusions : Exploring the economic burden of osteoporotic VF is expected to motivate to adopt effective treatment options for osteoporosis in order to prevent the incidence of fracture and the consequent costs.

The Socioeconomic Burden of Coronary Heart Disease in Korea

“…According to the human capital approach, the monetary value of opportunity costs for CHD morbidity and mortality was quantified as productivity loss due to absence from work caused by hospitalization and outpatient visits as well as premature death [17]. Productivity loss due to CHD-related morbidity was calculated by multiplying the average daily or hourly wage by days of hospitalization or hours spent in outpatient visits (assumed as one third of the day) attributable to CHD [18,19]. Premature death costs were the expected value of an individual's future earnings during the potential years of life lost (PYLL) [15], which was defined as a discrepancy between the life expectancy and the age of death as obtained from the Korean life table [20].…”

Healthcare Resource Utilization and Direct Medical Costs for Patients With Osteoporotic Fractures in China

“…27 Our estimates were a little higher than the costs in Mexico of $4366 for hip fractures, 28 and much higher than the costs in Thailand of $1075 (2008) for all fracture types 29 and the costs in South Korea of $1228 (2004) for vertebral fractures. 30 Annual direct medical costs associated with osteoporotic fractures varied between different countries; while considering the economic status of China, costs attributed to osteoporotic fractures in China were disproportionately high in our study. Besides, this study verified the previous findings that hip fractures were the most expensive type among osteoporotic fractures on a per-person basis.…”

Effect of improved medication adherence on health care costs in osteoporosis patients

“…Although a number of studies investigated health care costs paid by Korean patients with fractures, a few went as far to estimate how much money could be saved by preventing fractures as this present study did. [ 19 , 45 , 46 ] The findings of this study may inspire osteoporosis patients to initiate and maintain active medical treatment to prevent fractures.…”