Health care costs of heart failure: results from a randomised study of patient education

Heart failure is a serious syndrome with a bad prognosis. Hospitalisation is common and readmittance rate is high; factors which influence the cost of care and treatment. Only scarce data on detailed patient materials regarding health care costs are known.

To describe in detail the health care costs for heart failure patients.

Costs for patients (n=108) who completed a randomised education trial were studied for 6 months after hospital discharge. Costs for hospital stay, out-patient visits, diagnostic tests and procedures, laboratory analyses and drug treatment were calculated. Official unit prices list used to reimburse providers of cross-boundary health services and prices for drugs in the Swedish Drug Compendium were employed.

The total cost for a heart failure patient was approximately 20000 SEK (2564 US$, 7.80 SEK=1 US$) for 6 months. There was a 27-fold variation between patients. There was no relation between age or sex and cost. In decreasing order cost for hospitalisation was followed by costs for out-patient visits, diagnostic tests and procedures, laboratory analyses and drugs.

Hospitalisation was the largest part of the total cost and there was a large inter-individual variation. Efforts to reduce the economic burden should be focused on hospitalisation. Due to skewed distribution, individual data must be considered in the analysis of the efforts.