Contraceptives, chronic illness, pregnancy and health care costs in one health insurance in Colombia

Abstract

Objetive Evaluation of the impact of pregnancy on women with a high disease burden, especially with Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (CNCD) in the costs of a health insurer. Materials and Methods Retrospective costing study conducted at Famisanar EPS between 2016 and 2018. We used multiple linear regression models to evaluate; the overall costs were calculated for each patient. The insurer's perspective was taken into account for the analysis. Results The study universe was made up of 458 249 women of childbearing age affiliated to Famisanar EPS between 15 and 49 years, of which 24 030 (5.2%) women have some relationship with the CNCD, of these, 2 454 (10.2%) went to childbirth and caesarean section. We had determined the costs of pregnancy healthy´s women in U$200.41 and pregnancy CNCD´s women U$519.95 (97.5%) in terms of the costs for the complication’s gestation care. Using multinomial regression, we compared the pregnancy with CNCD with the other groups of women. We did not observe any significant differences in ingress and zone. However, we observe signicant differences in the age. Conclusion Pre-existing CNCD in pregnant women can lead to the use of additional resources in the health system. CNCD in society represent a severe burden for a health system due to high costs and especially when talking about women who have an CNCD and are in pregnant. The study also indicates that female infertility treatments are important for cost containment in health systems.