Cost of scheduled and unscheduled asthma management in seven European Union countries

Frequent need for emergency healthcare indicates poor asthma control and consumes resources that might be better spent on improved management. This study estimated the cost of scheduled and unscheduled healthcare for asthma in seven European Union (EU) countries. The occurrence of asthma-related healthcare resource use and asthma symptom severity were identified from a telephone sample of people with asthma in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Healthcare resource use was multiplied by country-specific unit costs to estimate per patient annual expenditure. Patients were divided into four groups according to asthma symptom severity: mild intermittent symptoms, mild persistent symptoms, moderate persistent symptoms and severe persistent symptoms. Cost was divided between scheduled and unscheduled care. Drug cost was not evaluable. The study included 2,803 patients, of whom 1,695 (60%) reported mild symptoms and 2,050 (73%) were aged 16 yrs. The average annual per patient cost was 789 for patients aged 0–4 yrs, 463 for patients aged 5–15 yrs and 566 for adults. Unscheduled care accounted for 47% of total cost in infants, 45% in children and 56% in adults. Around half of expenditure on asthma management was found to be due to unscheduled care regardless of the severity of patient symptoms