Abstract
BACKGROUND: Diabetes mellitus (DM) has become a significant worldwide public health problem and economic burden because a great proportion of healthcare costs has been spent on the treatment of DM and its related complications. The aim of this study was to examine the costs and length of stay (LoS) of hospitalizations due to diabetes-related complications in Taiwan. METHODS: This study is a retrospective claim database analysis using the Longitudinal Cohort of Diabetes Patients, with 2012 used as the base year. The hospitalization costs and LoS per admission were estimated for each complication of interest using data from the LHDB 2004 to 2012 cohorts. The presence of eight DM-related complications were identified using the ICD-9-CM codes and procedure codes. ANOVA was used to examine the relationships of diabetes duration with the LoS and costs of the complications. RESULTS: A total of 27,473 DM patients who were hospitalized in 2012 due to one of the examined DM-related complications were identified. The most common complications that caused the hospitalizations were nonfatal stroke (34.7%) and nonfatal ischemic heart disease (IHD) (28.7%). Amputation was the complication with the longest hospital stay, with a mean ± SD of 21.6 ± 14.1 days, followed by nonfatal stroke (13.6 ± 11.3), ulcer (12.7 ± 11.8), and fatal IHD (12.2 ± 13.6). The complications with the greatest hospitalization cost were fatal IHD (mean = TWD 306,209.8; median = TWD 221,417.0; 1TWD = 0.034USD) and fatal myocardial infarction (mean = TWD 272,840.1; median = TWD 174,008). CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that DM-related complications are associated with significant hospital LoS and costs. The study results could be useful for economic evaluations of diabetes treatments and the estimation of the overall economic impact of diabetes.