Parkinson's disease in Sweden-resource use and costs by severity

To estimate resource use and costs, including direct and indirect costs, in relation to levels of severity in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) in a Swedish setting.

Patients with idiopathic PD registered in the National Parkinson's Disease Patient Registry (PARKreg), with registrations of Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) and "off time" in the Skåne Region, were included. Annual costs of healthcare contacts, drugs, formal and informal care, and productivity loss associated with PD were estimated using data from PARKreg linked with regional and national healthcare registers between 2013 and 2019.

In total, 960 patients and 1324 observations (patient-years) were included. Total average cost per patient-year was SEK 168,982 (EUR 15,958) and ranged from SEK 62,404 (EUR 5893) for H&Y stage I to SEK 1,056,324 (EUR 99,755) in H&Y stage V. The dominating part of total costs for early stages were indirect costs accounting for 50-60% while formal care made up for 55% and 81% of total costs in H&Y IV and V, respectively. Total mean costs for formal care, informal care, and productivity loss also increased with increasing off-time.

Advanced and late stages of PD are associated with significant societal costs as patients in those stages often require resource-intensive and costly formal care. Thus, there are potential savings to be made, by optimizing the pharmacological and surgical symptomatic treatment of patients with advanced disease.