Affiliation:
1. Department of Rheumatology and Immunology Singapore General Hospital Singapore Singapore
2. Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine National University of Singapore Singapore Singapore
3. Health Services and Systems Research Duke‐NUS Medical School Singapore Singapore
4. Duke‐NUS Medical School Singapore Singapore
5. Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Singapore General Hospital Singapore Singapore
6. Biostatistics, Singapore Clinical Research Institute Singapore Singapore
7. Centre of Quantitative Medicine Duke‐NUS Medical School Singapore Singapore
8. Tampere Center for Child Health Research Tampere University Tampere Finland
Abstract
AbstractAimExisting studies on the cost of inflammatory arthritis (IA) and osteoarthritis (OA) are often cross‐sectional and/or involve patients with various disease durations, thus not providing a comprehensive perspective on the cost of illness from the time of diagnosis. In this study, we therefore assessed the cost of lost productivity in an inception cohort of patients with IA and OA in the year before and after diagnosis.MethodsEmployment status, monthly income, days absent from work, and presenteeism were collected at diagnosis and 1 year later to estimate the annual costs of unemployment, absenteeism, and presenteeism using human capital approach. Non‐parametric bootstrapping was performed to account for the uncertainty of the estimated costs.ResultsCompared to patients with OA (n = 64), patients with IA (n = 102, including 48 rheumatoid arthritis, 19 spondyloarthritis, 23 psoriatic arthritis, and 12 seronegative IA patients) were younger (mean age: 52.3 vs. 59.5 years) with a greater proportion receiving treatment (99.0% vs. 67.2%) and a greater decrease in presenteeism score (median: 15% vs 10%) 1 year after diagnosis. Annual costs of absenteeism and presenteeism were lower in patients with IA than those with OA both in the year before (USD566 vs. USD733 and USD8,472 vs. USD10,684, respectively) and after diagnosis (USD636 vs. USD1,035 and USD6,866 vs. USD9,362, respectively).ConclusionBoth IA and OA impose substantial cost of lost productivity in the year before and after diagnosis. The greater improvement in productivity seen in patients with IA suggests that treatment for IA improves work productivity.