Cardiovascular Care Costs Rising

Cardiovascular Care Costs Rising, Report Says Download Complimentary Source PDF

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: December 17, 2009 Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Action Points Note that the report was based on projections from data reported in the prior year and the most recent nationally-representative studies. The new year will ring in record high costs for treating heart disease and stroke, according to an American Heart Association report that projects a 5.8% increase over 2009 spending. Costs for cardiovascular care will rise to $503.2 billion in the U.S. next year, Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM, of Northwestern University, and colleagues predicted in the AHA statistics update. Direct costs will reach an estimated $324.1 billion, putting cardiovascular disease ahead of all other diagnostics groups, they wrote online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Digestive diseases came in second, with $225.2 billion for 2010, with mental, nervous system, and injury and poisoning closely bunched between $172 billion and $178 billion each. The biggest contributor to cardiovascular care costs was expected to be coronary heart disease, which at $177.1 billion for direct and indirect costs, was more than double that of stroke or hypertensive disease ($76.6 billion and $73.7 billion, respectively). Direct costs incurred at the hospital were the biggest component in cardiovascular care, at an estimated $155.7 billion. The authors said they based their projections on the most recent, nationally-representative data (largely the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) and relevant literature from the past year. The report was a collaboration with the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies. Lloyd-Jones' group attributed the rising costs, in part, to poorly controlled risk factors, particularly obesity. Among the notable findings: Physical inactivity is rife, with 59% of adults in the 2008 National Health Interview Survey reporting no vigorous activity. Cholesterol control is poor: fewer than half of treatment candidates, or even of the highest-risk, symptomatic heart disease patients receive lipid-lowering treatment, and only a third of treated patients reach their LDL goal. Obesity has reached at least 34% prevalence in adults and will likely continue to rise, given that 11.3% of children ages 2 to 19 were at or above the 97th percentile of BMI-for-age in the 2003-2006 NHANES. Obesity now accounts for almost 10% of all medical spending, an estimated $147 billion per year in 2008, according to Lloyd-Jones' group. "If current trends in the growth of obesity continue, total healthcare costs attributable to obesity could reach $861 to 957 billion by 2030, which would account for 16% to 18% of U.S. health expenditures," they wrote. The economic consequences of physical inactivity may account for 1.5% to 3.0% of total direct healthcare expenditures, according to World Health Organization data cited in the report.