Abstract
BackgroundJoint pain, including back pain, and arthritis are common conditions in the United States, affecting more than 100 million individuals and costing upwards of $200 billion each year. Although activity limitations associated with these disorders impose a substantial economic burden, this relationship has not been explored in a large U.S. cohort.MethodsIn this study, we used the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey to investigate whether functional limitations explain the difference in medical expenditures between patients with arthritis and joint pain and those without. We used sequential explanatory linear models to investigate this relationship and accounted for various covariates.ResultsUnadjusted mean expenditures were $10,587 for those with joint pain or arthritis, compared with $3813 for those without. In a fully adjusted model accounting also for functional limitations, those with joint pain or arthritis paid $1638 more than those without, a statistically significant difference.ConclusionsThe growing economic and public health burden of arthritis and joint pain, as well as the corresponding complications of functional, activity, and sensory limitations, calls for an interdisciplinary approach and heightened awareness among providers to identify strategies that meet the needs of high-risk patients in order to prevent and delay disease progression.
Highlights
Joint pain, including back pain, and arthritis are common conditions in the United States, affecting more than 100 million individuals and costing upwards of $200 billion each year
Most (87.7%) of U.S adults reporting arthritis or joint pain are older than 45 years of age, and they are predominantly non-Hispanic white (NHW) (75.6%) and female (63.1%)
Our analyses showed that individuals self-reporting any diagnosis of arthritis and/or joint pain had substantially higher mean total healthcare expenditures ($6773) than individuals without either
Summary
Joint pain, including back pain, and arthritis are common conditions in the United States, affecting more than 100 million individuals and costing upwards of $200 billion each year. Compared with the general population, those with diseases characterized by arthritis/rheumatism and chronic joint pain experience high rates of functional limitation [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Functional limitations include those related to limitations in mobility, Williams et al Arthritis Research & Therapy (2017) 19:38 significantly increase both healthcare use and associated costs. The monetary cost of these work-specific limitations is not yet known, but the prevalence at which these limitations occur may have a significant impact on workplace productivity, especially in physically demanding fields
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