Burden of illness of hepatitis C from a managed care organization perspective

The objectives of this study were to: (1). determine the total hepatitis C virus (HCV)related and total healthcare costs (HCV plus other co-morbidities) of patients with HCV in a managed care organization; (2). determine total healthcare costs of HCV patients with and without a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection as a comorbidity.

The study design was a retrospective analysis of a medical and pharmacy claims database of patients diagnosed with HCV in a 325000 member managed care organization. Patients diagnosed with HCV and 12 months of continuous eligibility in the managed care organization from January 1997 through December 1999 were included in the study. The main outcome measures of the study were the total healthcare costs and HCV-related healthcare costs and the impact of HIV as a co-morbidity on these costs.

The study identified 614 patients meeting the inclusion criteria. The study population was 58% male and had a mean age of 46 (+/- 10.6) years. In patients receiving interferon-alpha, their median total healthcare costs exceeded US dollars 4600 and the median HCV-related costs exceeded US dollars 2470. The total healthcare costs of HCV patients with HIV as a co-morbidity were significantly larger than patients without this comorbidity.

HCV represents a very important disease to managed care organizations. Patients with this disease require costly drug therapies and consume significant health care resources. Additional research is needed to more fully characterize future clinical and economic outcomes as new agents become available.