Contact Frequency, Travel Time, and Travel Costs for Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Jan Sørensen,Merete Lund Hetland,Louise Linde

doi:10.1155/2014/285951

Jan Sørensen, Merete Lund Hetland + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/285951

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Abstract

Objectives. To investigate travel time, and travel cost related to contacts with health care providers for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) during a three-month period. Methods. Patient-reported travel time and travel cost were obtained from 2847 patients with RA. Eleven outpatient clinics across Denmark recruited patients to the study. Data collected included frequency, travel time and travel costs for contacts at rheumatology outpatient clinics, other outpatient clinics, general practitioners, privately practicing medical specialists, inpatient hospitals and accident and emergency departments. Results. Over a 3-month period, patients with RA had on average 4.4 (sd 5.7) contacts with health care providers, of which 2.8 (sd 4.0) contacts were with rheumatology outpatient clinics. Private car and public travel were the most frequent modes of travel. The average patient spent 63 minutes and 13 € on travelling per contact, corresponding to a total of 4.6 hours and 56 € during the 3-month period. There was great variation in patient travel time and costs, but no statistically significant associations were found with clinical and sociodemographic characteristics. Conclusion. The results show that patients with RA spend private time and costs on travelling when they seek treatment. These findings are particularly important when analyzing social costs associated with RA.

Highlights

Patients’ time and costs during illness and health care treatment are relevant aspects to include in a complete analysis of the social costs of health interventions [1]
More individuals in the study sample had normal CRP levels (P = 0.04) and received treatment with biological medication (P = 0.01). t-tests indicated that the study population reported worse health than those who did not respond to the travel questions but responded to the health assessment questionnaire (HAQ), EQ-5D visual analogue scale (VAS), and EQ-5D TTO
No difference could be observed between respondents and noncompleters in terms of gender (P = 0.29), duration of Rheumatic arthritis (RA) (P = 0.44), or body mass index (BMI) (P = 0.26)

Summary

Introduction

Patients’ time and costs during illness and health care treatment are relevant aspects to include in a complete analysis of the social costs of health interventions [1]. Time and costs related to patients’ travels from home to their health care providers are relevant when the social implications of treatment options are assessed in, for example, costeffectiveness analyses. No data on travel time and cost for RA patients have been reported in the scientific literature, patients’ time and travel costs have been considered in a few economic evaluations of RA interventions, for example [14]. An oftenused strategy is to include patients’ travel time and costs as a simple average without any attempt to obtain detailed information of the variation among individual patients’ travel time and costs

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Conclusion