Burden of illness in Parkinson's disease

This study quantifies direct medical care costs for individual patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and projects total national costs of PD. Anonymous, patient-level data on health care utilization and cost were obtained from Medstat's MarketScan Research Databases. Patients were selected for study if they had either two instances of a diagnosis of PD or one diagnosis and two or more prescriptions for PD-related medication. A control group of persons without PD was selected for comparison. Total annual health care utilization and costs were calculated for both PD patients and controls. A total of 20,016 patients with PD were identified and followed up for an average of 853 days. The mean age of the patients was 73.6 years, and 51.2% were women. Total annual direct costs were 23,101 US Dollars (SD 27,529) per patient with PD versus 11,247 US Dollars (SD 16,486) for controls. The regression-adjusted incremental direct cost of PD versus control was 10,349 US Dollars (95% confidence interval, 9,053, 11,645). Adding 25,326 US Dollars in indirect costs, and multiplying by 645,000 cases of PD in the United States, the total cost to the nation is projected to be 23 billion US Dollars annually. This estimate is higher than most previous studies, with important implications for health care delivery systems worldwide.