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.
Highlights
Heart failure (HF) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in South Korea
Study design and data source The economic burden of heart failure (HF) was estimated based on a “prevalence-based approach,” which measured the costs associated with treating HF among both new and preexisting cases of HF patients in a year [14]
Based on the most recent HIRA-NPS data (2014), the analysis in this study revealed that the estimated prevalence rate of HF was 1.24 %
Summary
Heart failure (HF) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in South Korea. HF is a progressive disease with repeated recurrences and improvements, resulting in frequent hospitalization [3]. It has been observed in Minnesota, U.S that about 16.5 % of HF patients experience at least one. One in four HF patients among the Medicaid beneficiaries in the U.S is readmitted within a month after discharge with HF [5]. Among those 65 years or older, HF is the most common reason for hospitalization [6]. Since the onset of HF is strongly correlated with aging [2], the prevalence of HF is expected to grow worldwide with the aging population trend
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