Health care costs of heart failure: results from a randomised study of patient education.
BACKGROUND
Heart failure is a serious syndrome with a bad prognosis. Hospitalisation is common and readmittance rate is high; factors which influence the cost of care and treatment. Only scarce data on detailed patient materials regarding health care costs are known.


OBJECTIVE
To describe in detail the health care costs for heart failure patients.


METHODS
Costs for patients (n=108) who completed a randomised education trial were studied for 6 months after hospital discharge. Costs for hospital stay, out-patient visits, diagnostic tests and procedures, laboratory analyses and drug treatment were calculated. Official unit prices list used to reimburse providers of cross-boundary health services and prices for drugs in the Swedish Drug Compendium were employed.


RESULTS
The total cost for a heart failure patient was approximately 20000 SEK (2564 US$, 7.80 SEK=1 US$) for 6 months. There was a 27-fold variation between patients. There was no relation between age or sex and cost. In decreasing order cost for hospitalisation was followed by costs for out-patient visits, diagnostic tests and procedures, laboratory analyses and drugs.


CONCLUSIONS
Hospitalisation was the largest part of the total cost and there was a large inter-individual variation. Efforts to reduce the economic burden should be focused on hospitalisation. Due to skewed distribution, individual data must be considered in the analysis of the efforts.
Department of Community Medicine, Malmö University Hospital, University of, Lund, Sweden. agneta.bjork-linne@smi.mas.lu.se
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Linné
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Liedholm
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Jendteg
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Israelsson
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D005260:Female; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000191:economics* / Q000628:therapy; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000191:economics; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009819:Office Visits / Q000191:economics; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000191:economics