The total economic burden of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementies in the United States will reach $ 781 billion this year, according to new USC-conducted research.
This is the first of what annual national estimates of the multidisciplinary research team will be. The team wants to offer the most extensive accounting of the growing economic toll of Dementia. In addition to the costs of care, the model is also good for lost income from patients and care partners who cut or leave working hours, as well as the reduced quality of life experienced millions of patients and their families, among other things.
“Having a better understanding of who bears these costs and how they change over time can inform evidence-based policies that may ultimately reduce the financial impact of dementia,” said Julie Zissimopoulos, co-director of the Aging and Cognition program at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and professor At the USC Price School of Public Policy, WHO is Principal Investigator of the US Cost of Dementia Project.
Financed by a multi-year cooperative agreement from the National Institute on Aging (which is part of the National Institutes of Health), the project uses data from various large, national representative surveys, including the health and pension study and administrative health data of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. The researchers estimate the costs for patients, care partners and the health care system using dynamic microsmulation – a powerful tool to understand how changes in treatment, care and policy will affect the costs of dementia over time.
An estimated 5.6 million Americans live with dementia this year, including 5 million that are 65 years and older, according to the researchers. Medical and long -term care for patients with dementia costs the United States $ 232 billion this year, including $ 52 billion paid by patients and their families. More than two -thirds of the total healthcare costs are paid by Medicare ($ 106 billion) and Medicaid ($ 58 billion).
The social costs of Dementia are even more stunning, the model reveals. The largest share stems from a factor that is often not measured in other cost estimates: the significant decrease in quality of life for patients ($ 302 billion) and care partners ($ 6 billion). Lost income among friends and family who refrain from providing care – another measure that is often not recorded by other estimates – a total of $ 8.2 billion. Zorgpartners offer 6.8 billion hours of unpaid care, with a value of $ 233 billion.
This research shows the enormous toldementia on patients, their families and care partners. But it also points to the potential value of developing ways to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s and related diseases that cause dementia. “
Dana Goldman, founder of the USC Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service and Co-Principal Investigator in the project
A constant look at the changing costs of dementia
The clinical agents that are available to tackle dementia are changing rapidly. New treatments slow down the cognitive decline in some patients with Alzheimer’s at an early stage, and new blood tests make early detection from Alzheimer’s possible.
The USC-conducted research team builds aids to help researchers and policy makers understand how these and future evolutions in dementia care, prevention and policy can influence the costs for patients, the health care system and society. This information will support stakeholders in making decisions on priorities and the allocation of resources for reducing the costs of dementia.
In order to draw a wide range of perspectives, the research team includes prominent disciplines at USC – including the Schaeffer Center, the Price School of Public Policy, the Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Davis School of Gerontology and the universities and the Engineering – the Universation Pennsylvanie. Researchers from other institutions offer additional guidelines and patients and care partners are regularly consulted to ensure that the cost model is a reflection of Real-World experience.
In the future, the project will try to discover all types of costs to give the most extensive estimates of the national costs of dementia to date.
The American costs of the dementia project are financed by a cooperation agreement with the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (#U01AG086827).
Source: