Projected Savings to Canadian Provincial Budgets from Reduced Long-Term Care Home Utilization Due to a...

A disease-modifying Alzheimer's treatment could provide budgetary savings to Canadian provinces from a reduction in long-term care home use, yet we do not know the magnitude of those potential savings.

We project savings to each Canadian province's budget from 2023 to 2043.

Annual savings are projected using a Markov model. We account for reduction in long-term care home use and in use of Alternative Level of Care (ALC) beds, which are hospital beds occupied by care home-eligible patients on the wait list for admission.

A treatment that delays disease progression by 40% is projected to avoid 142,507 long-term care home and ALC years, resulting in $17.2 billion cumulative savings across all Canadian provinces, a 21% relative reduction among treatment eligible patients. Average per capita savings were $1,132, ranging from $734 (Alberta) to $2,895 (Prince Edward Island). Cumulative savings could increase to $22.7 billion with enhanced triage of patients in primary care stages and to $25.6 billion if all capacity constraints for diagnosis and treatment were removed.

A disease-modifying treatment could create budgetary savings from lower long-term care home use, offsetting part of the treatment cost. With the increasing demand for long-term care home beds and the high rates of patients being held in hospitals while wait-listed, such a treatment could additionally provide relief to the overburdened long-term care system in Canada.