Prevalence and socio-economic burden of heart failure in an aging society of South Korea

Abstract

BackgroundHeart failure (HF) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in South Korea. With the rapidly aging population in the country, the prevalence of HF and its associated costs are expected to rise continuously. This study was carried out to estimate the prevalence and economic burden of HF in order to understand its impact on our society.MethodsA prevalence-based, cost-of-illness study was conducted using the 2014 Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service-National Patients Sample (HIRA-NPS) data. Adult HF patients were defined as those aged ≥19 years who had at least one insurance claim record with a primary or secondary diagnosis of HF (ICD-10 codes of I11.0, I13.0, I13.2, and I50.x). The costs consist of direct costs (i.e., medical and non-medical costs) and indirect costs (i.e., productivity loss cost due to morbidity and premature death). Subgroup analyses were conducted by age group, history of HF hospitalization, and type of universal health security program enrolled in.ResultsA total of 475,019 adults were identified to have HF in 2014. The estimated prevalence rate of HF was 12.4 persons per 1,000 adults. According to the base cases and the extended definition of the cases, the annual economic burden of HF from a societal perspective ranges from USD 1,414.0 to 1,560.5 for individual patients, and from USD 752.8 million to 1,085.6 million for the country. A high percentage (68.5 %) of this socioeconomic burden consist of medical costs, followed by caregiver’s cost (13.2 %), productivity loss costs due to premature death (10.8 %) and morbidity (4.2 %), and transportation costs (3.4 %). The HF patients with prior hospitalization due to HF annually spent 9.7 times more for National-Health-Insurance-covered medical costs compared to HF patients who were not previously hospitalized.ConclusionsIn the present study, HF patients who were older and had a history of prior hospitalization for HF as well as an indigent status were shown at high risk of spending more for healthcare to treat their HF. An effective disease management protocol should be employed to target this patient group.

Direct and lost productivity costs associated with avoidable hospital admissions

“…Nonetheless, lost productivity due to absenteeism and premature death represented 16% of the total estimated cost. Studies produced in other countries analyzed lost productivity costs for some conditions (avoidable or not), including diabetes [31], asthma [32], heart failure [33] and COPD [34]. The proportion that lost productivity accounted for total costs in these studies ranged between 15 and 47% of total costs.…”

Transitional Care Interventions for Patients with Heart Failure: An Integrative Review

“…HF contributes to substantial morbidity, high mortality, frequent readmissions, and emergency department (ED) visits because of progressive HF pathogenesis, poor self-management, and emergent signs and symptoms owing to increased hemodynamic overload [1]. Consequently, these vicious cycles negatively affect patients' quality of life (QoL) [6] and health-related QoL (HRQoL) [7] as well as increase the burden of healthcare cost on patients and their families [8].…”

Costs and Healthcare Utilisation of Patients With Heart Failure in Spain

“…Of note, HF represents a major and growing economic problem [3,11,12]. Studies particularly focused on HF economic burden are important as they contribute to a better understanding of the drivers and problems which may lead to the increasing HF costs [3].…”

“…Studies particularly focused on HF economic burden are important as they contribute to a better understanding of the drivers and problems which may lead to the increasing HF costs [3]. Increasing the knowledge about HF costs and their determinants is important in order to ascertain how HF management can be optimized, leading to a signi cant decrease of HF costs [3,7,11,12]. Unfortunately, data about costs of HF in Spain are very scarce or limited to the use of speci c drugs, but not focused on a comprehensive approach [13][14][15][16][17].…”