BioMedEcon Health Economics and Outcomes Research has just delivered an oral presentation summarizing the results of a pioneering study that compares healthcare costs of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to those of patients with depression.
This presentation was delivered at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society of General and Internal Medicine (SGIM) held in Pittsburgh, Penn.
This study, which
was funded by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., examined nine years
(1997-2006) of health claims data among adults enrolled in the Florida
Medicaid program who were either newly-diagnosed with "pure OCD" (OCD
without the presence of bipolar disorder, psychoses or depression) or
"pure depression" (depression without the presence of bipolar disorder,
psychoses or OCD).
Patients with OCD were matched to those with depression on sex,
race/ethnicity, medical illness severity, and age. Results showed that
patients with newly-diagnosed OCD had three times higher healthcare
costs than those with newly-diagnosed depression during the two years
following their index diagnosis (median, two-year, per-patient
healthcare costs were $25,666 versus $7,732, p<0.0001).
It is
particularly noteworthy that costs were significantly higher for
outpatient medical but not outpatient psychiatric care.
OCD, which affects approximately two percent of the U.S. population, is
an anxiety disorder that is characterized by recurrent, unwanted
thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions).
Whereas many studies have found that patients with depression have
higher healthcare costs than patients without depression, few studies
have examined the healthcare costs incurred by patients with OCD.
"The results of this study are surprising," said Dr. Cheryl Hankin,
principal investigator of the study and President and Chief Scientific
Officer of BioMedEcon.
"Because we matched patients with OCD or depression based upon their medical illness severity, one might expect that outpatient medical costs would have been equivalent between the groups. Given the well-established high utilization of medical services among patients with depression, these findings suggest that patients with OCD may be even more burdensome to the healthcare system. Physicians must do a better job of identifying OCD-related distress among patients receiving care in medical settings, and referring patients with OCD for specialty psychiatric care."
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Based in Moss Beach, California, privately-held BioMedEcon, LLC is a
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