TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bock, Jens-Oliver
A1  - Luppa, Melanie
A1  - Brettschneider, Christian
A1  - Riedel-Heller, Steffi Gerlinde
A1  - Bickel, Horst
A1  - Fuchs, Angela
A1  - Gensichen, Jochen
A1  - Maier, Wolfgang
A1  - Mergenthal, Karola
A1  - Schäfer, Ingmar
A1  - Schön, Gerhard
A1  - Weyerer, Siegfried
A1  - Wiese, Birgitt
A1  - Bussche, Hendrik van den
A1  - Scherer, Martin
A1  - König, Hans-Helmut
T1  - Impact of depression on health care utilization and costs among multimorbid patients : from the MultiCare Cohort Study
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Objective: The objective of this study was to describe and analyze the effects of depression on health care utilization and costs in a sample of multimorbid elderly patients.
Method: This cross-sectional analysis used data of a prospective cohort study, consisting of 1,050 randomly selected multimorbid primary care patients aged 65 to 85 years. Depression was defined as a score of six points or more on the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15). Subjects passed a geriatric assessment, including a questionnaire for health care utilization. The impact of depression on health care costs was analyzed using multiple linear regression models. A societal perspective was adopted.
Results: Prevalence of depression was 10.7%. Mean total costs per six-month period were €8,144 (95% CI: €6,199-€10,090) in patients with depression as compared to €3,137 (95% CI: €2,735-€3,538; p<0.001) in patients without depression. The positive association between depression and total costs persisted after controlling for socio-economic variables, functional status and level of multimorbidity. In particular, multiple regression analyses showed a significant positive association between depression and pharmaceutical costs.
Conclusion: Among multimorbid elderly patients, depression was associated with significantly higher health care utilization and costs. The effect of depression on costs was even greater than reported by previous studies conducted in less morbid patients.
Y1  - 2014
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/33347
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-333479
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2014 Bock et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 9
IS  - (3):e91973
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -