Refined method for estimating medical expenditures for liver disease using the patient survey and claim data in Japan

This study was performed to develop a estimation method for medical expenditures based on detailed data for the various kinds of liver disease.

Using claim data from the Survey of National Medical Care Insurance Services and the Patient Survey in Japan, we estimated the medical expenditures for various liver diseases using a refined method, in which the amount of expenditure by age and sex was multiplied by the respective numbers of patients.

According to our estimates, the total medical expenditures per year for all liver diseases in Japan was 680 billion yen. The breakdown included: viral hepatitis (256 billion yen); malignant neoplasms of the liver and intrahepatic bile ducts (170 billion yen); cirrhosis of the liver (97 billion yen); other liver diseases (63 billion yen); chronic hepatitis (61 billion yen); and alcoholic hepatitis (33 billion yen).

These are the first published estimates, not only for the total medical expenditure for all liver diseases, but also for individual categories. The method we employed in this study can readily be applied to estimate medical costs for other diseases.