By Alan Mozes
NEW YORK, Jul 04 (Reuters Health) - Treating Americans suffering from the
degenerative illness rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can place a heavy financial
burden on their employers' medical and disability plans, according to
researchers.
The annual per capita employer expenditure for employees with RA was over
$17,800, compared with just over $6,000 for other employees, report US
researchers.
The new study was sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies Immunex
Corporation and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories. It is published in the June issue of
the Journal for Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The researchers examined data collected between 1995 and 1997 from the
prescription and medical health care records of the families of current and
retired employees of a US Fortune 100 company. From the over 100,000
beneficiaries, almost 1,600 were identified as having had one or more RA medical
or disability-related claim in the 3 year period with just under 500 forming a
sample of current employees incurring RA-related expenses.
The researchers found that for the 500 RA employees, direct treatment and
medications for the illness amounts to 12% of the total medical cost to
employers--with 68% coming costs of treating other illnesses, such as
depression, and 20% going towards conditions broadly related to RA.
"These results have important implications for employers seeking to develop
strategies to manage the costs of RA," state the research team led by author Dr.
Howard G. Birnbaum from the Analysis Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Birnbaum
and his associates suggest that early treatment of RA could benefit both
employee and employer, reduce medical expenses and help maintain employee
productivity.
"Failure to properly account fully for these broader consequences of RA
would result in a significant under-assessment of the cost to the employer," add
the team of researchers. By way of pointing to a possible cost-cutting solution,
the researchers highlight the fact that prescription medications only accounted
for 25% of the medical portion of the employer's RA expenses-- suggesting that
encouraging the development and use of new anti-rheumatic pharmaceuticals may
lead to a further reduction in overall direct and indirect medical care costs.
