Research Article Healthcare Utilization and Costs of Systemic Lupus

Copyright © 2013 Hong J. Kan et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. Healthcare utilization and costs associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in a US Medicaid population were examined.Methods. Patients ≥ 18 years old with SLE diagnosis (ICD-9-CM 710.0x) were extracted from a large Medicaid database 2002–2009. Index date was date of the �rst SLE diagnosis. Patients with and without SLE were matched. All patients had a variable length of followup with a minimum of 12 months. Annualized healthcare utilization and costs associated with SLE and costs of SLE �ares were assessed during the followup period. Multivariate regressions were conducted to estimate incremental healthcare utilization and costs associated with SLE. Results. A total of 14,777 SLE patients met the study criteria, and 14,262 were matched to non-SLE patients. SLE patients had signi�cantly higher healthcare utilization per year than their matched controls. e estimated incremental annual cost associated with SLE was $10,984, with the highest increase in inpatient costs