Background: Healthcare resource utilization and costs associated with cardiovascular events among patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are needed to assess the value of treatments.
Methods: A retrospective analysis of a large US administrative claims database (1/1/2006-12/31/2011) was conducted to describe episodes of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE: hospitalization for stroke, myocardial infarction (MI), or cardiac arrest) in adults with CHD and ACS, respectively. The CHD cohort (n=245,185) had either a diagnosis of MI, a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedure or coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), or both, a CHD diagnosis and a multiple vessel coronary procedure, at a minimum. The ACS cohort (N= 75,231, not mutually exclusive with CHD) had =1 ACS-related hospitalization. The index date was the first observed cohort-specific disease claim and the 30-day period following the service date of the index episode or discharge date (for hospitalizations). Patients were required to have continuous health plan enrollment for 12 months +/- the index episode. HF, MI, and cardiac arrest diagnoses did not specify whether they were fatal or not.
Results: Mean age in both cohorts was ~65 years and ~66% were male. The overall MI rate during the 12-month follow-up period was 15.6 and 26.4 per 1,000 person years for CHD and ACS patient, respectively. Among patients with at least one MACE, 286 CHD patients (4.8% of those with an event) and 137 ACS patients (5.5% of those with an event) experienced a second event during the 12-month follow-up period. Mean (SD) total episode-related costs per patient were $19,230 ($34,983) for CHD patients and $23,490 ($36,749) for ACS patients. Inpatient hospitalization represented the highest proportion of costs at 86.9% of CHD and 95.0% of ACS episode-related costs, while CVD-related pharmacotherapy mean costs (SD) were only $226 ($293) and $228 ($294) per patient for CHD and ACS, respectively.
Conclusions: CHD and ACS are resource intensive diseases in the first year after index episode, with most costs related to hospitalizations. Outpatient cardiovascular drug costs make up a small proportion of the total costs.
