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. 2021 Dec 29:13:969-980.
doi: 10.2147/CEOR.S331499. eCollection 2021.

Direct and Indirect Costs of Asthma Burden in Abu Dhabi: A Retrospective Analysis of Insurance Claims Data from 2015 to 2018

Khulood Al Mazrouei  1 , Asma Ibrahim Almannaei  2 , Faiza Medeni Nur  3 , Nagham Bachnak  3 , Ashraf Alzaabi  4
Affiliations

Direct and Indirect Costs of Asthma Burden in Abu Dhabi: A Retrospective Analysis of Insurance Claims Data from 2015 to 2018

Khulood Al Mazrouei et al. Clinicoecon Outcomes Res. .

Abstract

Purpose: Asthma causes a high economic burden on the health-care system. Previous research on the cost of asthma in Abu Dhabi was in 2011 and revealed high medical costs. This work aimed to estimate both direct and indirect costs of asthma with trend analysis over a period of four years.

Patients and methods: All data on medical costs, work absenteeism, and mortality were collected from the e-claims system of the national health insurance database. Medical costs included medication use, emergency room (ER) visits, non-ER visits, outpatient care, and hospitalization from 2015 to 2018. Indirect costs in terms of work absenteeism were calculated by multiplying the average daily income per employer by the number of workdays missed due to sick leaves documented in the database in 2019.

Results: Over the years, the total medical costs increased from AED 161,843,698 in 2015 to AED 206,548,620 in 2018. The largest contribution was attributed to outpatient care, while hospitalization accounted for the smallest proportion of the total costs in 2018. Likewise, the mean annual per-patient cost in 2015 was AED 1119 and increased to AED 1162 in 2018. Indirect costs were estimated to be AED 27,482,319 resulting from 30,948 sick leaves in the year 2019 only.

Conclusion: Asthma is a cause for huge expenditure from the health-care system perspective in Abu Dhabi. It also has a large impact on society through work absenteeism. Costs of asthma management are increasing every year, which suggests a call-to-action to improve the disease management status using cost-effective strategies.

Keywords: Abu Dhabi; asthma; direct cost; economic burden; indirect cost.

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Conflict of interest statement

This project is an investigator-initiated project funded by AstraZeneca. The funding sources had no role in the conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distribution of medical costs according to categories of resources use. (A) Breakdown of medical costs between emergency visits, non-emergency visits and medications. (B) Breakdown of medical costs between outpatient visits, hospitalizations and medications.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Change in medical costs over the study period from 2015 to 2018. (A) Total medical costs per year from 2015 to 2018. (B) Medications cost per year from 2015 to 2018.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Medication use by the number of dispensed prescriptions in different years.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Trend analysis for medical costs using log transformed data. (A) Trend analysis for total medical costs. (B) Trend analysis for medical costs other than medications. (C) Trend analysis for medication cost.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Number of patients according to the prescription frequency of each drug class during 2018.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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