Impacts of frailty on health care costs among community-dwelling older adults: A meta-analysis of cohort studies

Abstract

BackgroundThe demands for health care services from the frail elderly individuals in the community continue to increase, which will exert a tremendous burden on health care costs. However, little is known regarding the magnitude of these impacts. In this study, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence to explore the impact of frailty on health care costs among community-dwelling older adults. Materials and methodsRelevant published articles were searched from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Science and Technology Journal Full-text Database (VIP), Wanfang Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), and the reference lists of articles. Publishedcohort or cross-sectional studies assessing the impacts of frailty on health care costs among community-dwelling older adults were identified (to June 2020). The outcomes on health care costs before and after baseline were stratified by frailty status. ResultsA total of 7 cohort studies comprised of a total of 3,750,611 participants were included in our study. Our analyses showed that: (1) compared with the robust group, health care costs increased by $79–13,423.83 (standardized mean difference, SMD = 0.22, 95% Confidence interval, 95% CI, 0.22–0.22; P < 0.00001) in the pre-frail elderly and by $616–32,549.96 (SMD = 0.55, 95% CI, 0.44–0.67; P < 0.00001) in the frail elderly in the community. A significantly higher in the increase of health care costs was observed in the frail group compared with the pre-frail group(SMD = 0.35, 95% CI, 0.19–0.51; P < 0.0001); (2) the frailty phenotype components increased the health care costs of the elderly in community (weight loss: $1,630–6,209, SMD = 0.43, 95% CI, 0.17–0.69; P = 0.001; weakness: $275–7,586, SMD = 0.24, 95% CI, 0.08–0.40; P = 0.001; exhaustion: $1,545–10,559, SMD = 0.31, 95% CI, 0.13–0.49; P = 0.0006; slowness: $352–1,1891, SMD = 0.40, 95% CI = 0.14–0.65; P = 0.003; low physical activity: $512–3,459, SMD = 0.26, 95% CI, 0.16–0.36; P < 0.00001); (3) the increase in the frailty index was parallel with the increase in health care costs by $12,363–21,066 (SMD = 0.41, 95% CI, 0.29–0.53; P < 0.00001). Conclusions and ImplicationsThis study revealed the adverse economic impacts of frailty status, frailty phenotype components, and frailty index on health care costs in community-dwelling older adults. Future research is warranted to investigate costs incurred by interventions to improve frailty, which will provide further insights into additional health care costs due to frailty.