Article

Refining the measurement of the economic burden of chronic diseases in Canada.

Author References John Rappoport, Department of Economics, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA.
Chronic diseases in Canada (impact factor: 0.98). 02/2004; 25(1):13-21. pp.13-21
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT This article presents an analysis of the economic burden of a number of chronic diseases in Canada. In the analysis, we adjusted our measure of utilization of physician and hospital services for co-existing chronic diseases, which we found to be widely prevalent and to have an impact on resource use. Using data from the 1999 National Population Health Survey, we developed resource use rankings for several chronic conditions and decomposed these measures into prevalence and per-person utilization components. Our results indicate that, for the diseases with the greatest impact, resource use measures are driven more by disease prevalence than intensity of resource use. The diseases with the highest overall degree of resource use are back pain, arthritis or rheumatism, high blood pressure and migraines for people under 60; and arthritis or rheumatism and high blood pressure for people over 60. Our methods can be used to forecast the overall relative impact of resource use due to disease prevalence and per-person resource use intensity for various conditions.

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Keywords

1999 National Population Health Survey
 
article presents
 
blood pressure
 
chronic conditions
 
chronic diseases
 
co-existing chronic diseases
 
decomposed
 
disease prevalence
 
diseases
 
economic burden
 
greatest impact
 
highest
 
hospital services
 
per-person resource use intensity
 
per-person utilization components
 
prevalence
 
resource use
 
resource use measures
 
resource use rankings
 
various conditions
 

John Rapoport