PND30 - health care resource utilizations and costs among migraine patients in the us medicaid population

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To examine the health care resource utilizations and costs amongmigraine patients in the U.S. Medicaid population. METHODS: Migraine patientswere identified (International Classification of Disease, 9th Revision, ClinicalModification [ICD-9-CM] diagnosis code 346) using Medicaid data from January 01,2009 through December 31, 2009. The first diagnosis date was designated as theindex date, and patients were required to have at least a 1-year baseline (pre-indexdate) and 1-year follow-up (post-index date) period. A comparison cohort was created for patients without a migraine diagnosis during the study period, using 1:1propensity score matching to control for age, region, gender and baseline CharlsonComorbidity Index score. The comparison cohort’s index date was chosen at random to minimize selection bias. Patients in both cohorts were required to be age?18 years and have continuous medical and pharmacy benefits 1-year pre- andpost-index date. Study outcomes (health care resource utilizations and costs) werecompared between the migraine and comparison cohorts. RESULTS: After applyingPSM, 380,751 patients were assigned to each cohort, and baseline characteristicswere well-balanced. A higher percentage of patients with migraines had inpatientstays (21.53% vs. 11.00%, p<0.0001), other therapy (99.88% vs. 65.78%, p<0.001) andpharmacy visit claims (90.52% vs. 48.35%, p<0.0001), compared to those without amigraine diagnosis. The patients in the migraine cohort also incurred significantlyhigher other therapy ($4,111 vs. $2,312, p<0.0001) and pharmacy visit costs ($1,074vs. $512, p<0.0001) than those in the comparison cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Migrainepatients incurred significantly higher costs and had higher health care resourceutilizations than those without migraines