Lifetime medical costs for women: Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stress urinary incontinence

Purpose. To estimate the absolute and relative lifetime medical costs of treating women with cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, or stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Methods. Women under 65 years, treated for CVD, diabetes, or SUI, were identified using administrative medical claims data from a large employer (n >100,000). A case-control methodology was used to estimate the annual medical costs of these women. Based on these estimates and published government statistics, annual costs for women 65 years and older were calculated. An incidence-based methodology with steady-state assumptions was used to project to lifetime medical costs. Cost estimates are incremental, measured as the difference between costs of patients and their demographically similar controls without the condition. They therefore represent the additional costs of treating patients with the condition, beyond the average, baseline costs incurred by controls without the condition. Findings. The incremental lifetime medical cost of treating a woman (in 2002 dollars) with CVD is $423,000, with diabetes is $233,000, and with SUI is $58,000. Including the baseline medical costs of the control, the total lifetime medical costs (i.e., sum of incremental and baseline lifetime medical costs) of treating a woman with CVD are 3.4 times greater than the costs of a woman without CVD. Similarly, a woman with diabetes has total costs on average, 2.5 times greater than the costs of her control, whereas a woman with SUI has total lifetime medical costs 1.8 times greater than the costs of a similar woman without SUI. Conclusions. These substantial cost estimates suggest the need for further gender-specific research and policies addressing the long-term implications of health care financing, treatment, and preventive care.