Effects of social support and education on health care costs for patients with fibromyalgia.
OBJECTIVE
The rising costs of health care are of great concern, particularly for the chronically ill. Interventions that promote health status and well being while teaching appropriate use of the health care system have led to cost savings among patients with osteoarthritis. We carried out social support and education interventions with patients with fibromyalgia (FM) and assessed the effect on health care costs, psychosocial variables, and health status.


METHODS
Participants were 600 patients with FM who were members of a health maintenance organization. They were randomly assigned to one of 2 experimental groups (social support; social support and education) or to a no-treatment control group. Assessments were conducted at baseline and following a one year intervention. Health care cost data were obtained directly from participants' medical records.


RESULTS
Results indicated significant reductions in all groups' costs of prescriptions, laboratory tests, and visits to a nurse, nurse practitioner and/or physicians' assistant. All groups also showed improvements on variables assessing effect of FM, self-efficacy, depression, and knowledge of FM. The social support and education group was less helpless after one year than the other groups; differential changes for all other variables were not significant.


CONCLUSIONS
The study did not reveal differential changes in health care costs among participants in the experimental and control groups. These findings emphasize the importance of using objective health care utilization data when calculating health care costs, as well as the value of including a no-treatment control group to prevent erroneous conclusions about treatment efficacy.
Oliver
K
K
SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, San Diego State University, California 92120, USA.
Cronan
T A
TA
Walen
H R
HR
Tomita
M
M
D005260:Female; D005356:Fibromyalgia / Q000191:economics* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D017048:Health Care Costs; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D012944:Social Support