Comparison Of Methods To Estimate Disease-Related Cost And Healthcare Resource Utilization For Autoimmune Diseases In...

Area of Science:

• Health Outcomes Research
• Pharmacoeconomics
• Clinical Epidemiology

Background:

• Accurate assessment of disease-related costs and healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) is crucial for health outcomes research.
• Few studies have compared different methodologies for calculating disease-related cost and HCRU.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare four distinct methods for calculating disease-related cost and HCRU in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ulcerative colitis (UC).
• To evaluate the generalizability of findings across different autoimmune diseases.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from the IBM MarketScan Research Databases for patients with RA and UC.
• Compared four attribution methods: claim-wide diagnosis codes (Method 1), likelihood ratio cutoffs for procedures/medications (Method 2), case-control differences (Method 3), and manual clinician determination (Method 4).

Main Results:

• Method 2 (3.5x likelihood ratio) and Method 1 (claim-wide) closely approximated Method 4 for RA disease-related cost and HCRU.
• Method 2 (3.5x) was the closest approximation to Method 4.
• Similar patterns were observed for Methods 1-3 in UC patients, despite Method 4 not being feasible due to its labor-intensive nature.

Conclusions:

• Method 2 (3.5x) and Method 1 provide reliable approximations for disease-related cost and HCRU, with Method 1 being a simpler option.
• The findings suggest that simpler methods can be adequate for approximating disease-related costs and HCRU in certain research contexts.
• The observed patterns indicate potential generalizability of these cost/HCRU assessment methods across autoimmune diseases like RA and UC.