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P1‐589: INCREASED MEDICAID SPENDING ASSOCIATED WITH DEMENTIA
Author(s) -
Zhu Carolyn W.,
Ornstein Katherine,
Cosentino Stephanie,
Gu Yian,
Andrews Howard,
Stern Yaakov
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2019.06.1194
Subject(s) - medicaid , dementia , medicine , gerontology , cohort , population , cohort study , demography , health care , environmental health , disease , economics , economic growth , sociology
with activities of daily living (ADLs), instrumental ADLs, and/or providing supervision. To fill this knowledge gap we measured the cost of informal care by age, sex, and severity for ADRD patients for 1996-2015. Methods:We used the Aging Demographic and Memory Study informant caregiving questionnaire to estimate the average annual cost of informal care for ADRD stratified by age, sex, severity and year. We used additional data sources, such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System’s Caregiver Module and Global Burden of Disease. We estimated the volume of informal care using the number of hours of active helping and supervision. The unit cost of an hour of informal care varied with the type of care provided and the characteristics of the patient and caregiver. We multiplied these estimates by the prevalence of ADRD stratified by age, sex, severity and year to obtain our estimate of the total cost of informal care for ADRD in the US. Results:This is on-going research although preliminary estimates show that informal care represents a significant share of the total costs associated with ADRD in the US. We compared the results obtained with opportunity cost, replacement cost, and a mix of the two approaches, and found that final estimates of costs vary significantly with the approach chosen. Conclusions: Informal care makes up a major portion of the costs of ADRD care. Ignoring informal care underestimates substantially the total cost of ADRD, and lessens the true extent of the burden that affects families with a relative with dementia.