PDB37 The Cost of Hypoglycemic Events Associated With Diabetes: A Retrospective Claims Database Study

Abstract

Hypoglycemic events are a common complication associated with diabetes and the majority of these events are mild and self treated by the patient. For severe hypoglycemic events, however, hospital visits are often required. This study was conducted to better understand the impact of medical attendance required to care for severe hypoglycemic events on total annual health care costs. A 1:1 matched case-control cohort analysis was conducted in the US using the IMS LifeLink™ Health Plan Claims Database. Patients were included as cases if they experienced at least one hypoglycemic event in 2009 which required hospitalization and as controls if they did not experience any hypoglycemic event. Cases and controls were matched by age, gender, type of diabetes, baseline co-morbidities and payer type. Univariate and multiple regression analyses on total annual health care costs were conducted. A total of 1878 matched cases and controls were included. The mean age was 58.6 (13.7) years old, 51.2% of patients were males and 97.2% of patients had type II diabetes. Patients were mostly covered by commercial health insurance (69%) and Medicare (20.1%). The mean baseline Charlson Co-morbidity Index was 3.5 (2.5), and the main baseline co-morbidities were hypertension (77.0%) and dyslipidemia (48.4%). Univariate results showed that cases with severe hypoglycemic events had significantly higher total annual healthcare costs than their respective controls ($32,337 vs. $19,786, p-value<0.0001). These results were confirmed by the multivariate analyses which showed that severe hypoglycemic events led to a statistically significant 1.66-fold (95%CI = [1.35; 2.04]) increase of total annual health care costs compared to controls, after adjusting for other relevant co-factors such as region and co-morbidities. The medical attendance required to care for severe hypoglycemic events in patients with diabetes was found to have a significant impact on total annual health care costs.