Objective: The economic impact of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is substantial, but most studies provide cost estimates specific to a US population. We performed a cost-of-illness analysis of patients with RA for French society.
Methods: A cross-sectional study among rheumatologists in 148 hospitals in France was conducted between November and December 2000. Data were collected on health resource consumption associated with RA (treatments, medical devices, physician visits, examinations, hospitalization, other health professional care) during the previous 12 months. Direct costs and social costs were evaluated for 1109 RA patients. The relation of costs to disease activity and severity was analyzed.
Results: The annual direct cost of RA per patient was over euro4000. The costs due to hospitalizations represented around 60% of the costs. The major reason for hospitalization was acute care for RA in a rheumatic disease ward. Patients visited a physician an average of 13 times during the 12 months, 7.7 +/- 8.6 visits to an office-based physician and 5.1 +/- 4.4 visits to a hospital-based physician. Among them, 37% of patients were receiving at least one disability pension (16.7%) or sick-leave allowance (11.9%), with an estimated cost of euro7328 per patient. The mean annual budget per patient was euro2742. Medical and social costs increased in patients with severe disease (2 times), longer disease duration since diagnosis (more than double for patients with a history longer than 10 yrs vs patients with less than 2 yrs), active disease (1.4 times), and functional status (4 times more for American College of Rheumatology class IV than for class I).
Conclusion: Direct costs represented 59% of the total costs for patients with active RA and 57% for patients with severe RA. Social costs represented 41% of the total costs on average.