Health Care Encounters and Expenditures Among Children With Diagnosed Tic Disorders and Co-Occurring Disorders, 2022

This study aimed to use claims data to calculate incremental 2022 health care expenditure estimates for children with tic disorders relative to children without tic disorders.

Children ages 6-17 years with tic disorders were identified in the Merative MarketScan Multi-State Medicaid (N=6,277) and MarketScan Commercial (employer-sponsored insurance [ESI]; N=6,955) databases via inpatient and outpatient claims and were compared with children without tic disorders, matched at a 1:8 ratio on age, sex, and coverage type. Presence of 12 types of co-occurring disorders was identified. Analyses were stratified by insurance type. Individual-level total expenditures and total inpatient, total outpatient, outpatient psychological services, and filled prescription medication expenditures were calculated and compared by tic disorder status. Two-part regression models for Medicaid and generalized linear regression models for ESI were fit to estimate the difference in expenditures for children with versus without tic disorders, with sex, age, and presence of individual co-occurring disorders as covariates.

In 2022, mean per-person expenditures for children with tic disorders were $4,549 in the Medicaid sample and $9,870 in the ESI sample-more than twice as high as totals for children without tic disorders. The adjusted mean difference in expenditures between children with and children without tic disorders was -$15 (nonsignificant) in the Medicaid sample and $1,641 in the ESI sample (p<0.001).

This study documents substantial health care utilization and expenditures for children with tic disorders, although higher mean expenditures relative to children without tic disorders largely reflect differences in the prevalence of co-occurring disorders.