It is well established that the costs attributable to diabetes (including T2DM) are substantial. One recent estimate suggested that the total economic burden of all types of diabetes in the US exceeds $174 billion annually, which includes $116 billion in excess medical expenditures and $58 billion in reduced nation productivity [6]. Medical costs attributed www.selleckchem.com/products/Sorafenib-Tosylate.html to all types of diabetes include $27 billion for direct care, $58 billion to treat patients with diabetes-related chronic complications, and $31 billion in excess general medical costs [6]. Significant evidence exists showing the relationship between diabetes-related costs and observed glucose values [7-12]. However, as informative as these studies have been in communicating the economic impact of diabetes, many studies have included data from sources outside the US or did not focus on managed care populations.

Further, identifying T2DM patients who could be considered high cost (HC) is of significant interest to health care payers, given the rising health care costs in the US��interventions could be developed that would focus on patients who are likely to become HC and therefore minimize costs of the disease. Previous studies have identified HC patients in other disease areas (e.g., acute coronary syndromes) [13]; but to our knowledge, no retrospective analysis has been published that examines HC patients with T2DM. The goal of this analysis was to document the actual health care costs incurred by payers for a T2DM population and to determine which factors were associated with patients in the higher tiers of the T2DM cost distribution.

Additionally, this study compared health care costs for patients who were identified as HC with patients who were identified as not high cost (NHC). Methods This analysis used the LifeLink database (formerly PharMetrics), a commercially available source of computerized administrative claims from 95 managed care health plans covering more than 61 million unique patients. The database included claims from private health plans in all four US geographic regions and had an age and sex distribution representative of national managed care enrollment. The database included patient-level demographics and periods of health plan enrollment; primary and nonprimary diagnoses; detailed information about hospitalizations, diagnostic testing, and therapeutic procedures; inpatient and outpatient physician services; prescription drug use; and cost data in the form of managed-care reimbursement rates for each service. Data are tracked longitudinally within patients via de-identified and unique patient numbers. Anacetrapib For the purposes of this analysis, the most recent 5 years of data were used.