Institute for Social Medicine Reports Findings in Alzheimer Disease (Medical management, costs, and consequences of Alzheimer’s disease in Germany:…

Institute for Social Medicine Reports Findings in Alzheimer Disease (Medical management, costs, and consequences of Alzheimer's disease in Germany: an analysis of health claims data)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Pain & Central Nervous System Week -- New research on Dementia and Mental Illness is the subject of a report. According to news reporting out of Berlin, Germany, by NewsRx editors, research stated, "The main objective of this analysis was to assess the medical and economic differences between patients with and without diagnosed Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Analysis included co-morbidities, patterns of drug use, and clinical course, as well as the magnitude of these differences attributable to AD."

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Institute for Social Medicine, "This evaluation is based on retrospective analyses of anonymized claims data from 2005-2008 provided by a large German Statutory Health Insurance (SHI). Cross-sectional analyses were performed with the following data: demographics, number of hospitalizations, number of in-patient days, number of ambulatory physician visits, number of drugs used, total number of defined daily doses (DDD) of prescribed drugs, and costs. A propensity score model was used to assess costs attributable to AD. Patients with AD caused substantially higher costs from the perspective of a SHI. The differences in long-term care costs explained 70-75% of the total cost difference, with being responsible for about half of the total costs in AD patients. Comparing matched AD patients with controls resulted in 2.2-2.4-fold higher costs in the cross-sectional analysis, €7413-€9207 for AD patients vs €3378-€3850 for controls. The propensity score model resulted in a difference of €3771 attributable to AD. These costs are mainly caused by differences in hospitalization and long-term care costs. This analysis is one of the largest health economic studies of AD in Germany. The limitations of this study include the fact that reported diagnosis couldn't be validated and disease severity was not taken into account."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "Despite these methodological constraints, it can be concluded that AD is a substantial cost driver from the SHI payer perspective in Germany."

For more information on this research see: Medical management, costs, and consequences of Alzheimer's disease in Germany: an analysis of health claims data. Journal of Medical Economics, 2015;18(6):466-73 (see also Dementia and Mental Illness).

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting B. Bruggenjurgen, Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, Berlin, Germany and Boston Healthcare Associates International GmbH , Berlin , Germany. Additional authors for this research include F. Andersohn, N. Ezzat, L. Lacey and S. Willich.

Keywords for this news article include: Berlin, Europe, Germany, Tauopathies, Brain Diseases, Alzheimer Disease, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dementia and Mental Illness, Central Nervous System Diseases.

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