Adults with PAH lose around 8% of annual workdays due to inpatient, outpatient care
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Key takeaways:
- The value of work lost per patient in 2019 was between $340 and $1,071 a month.
- Women had a higher average of lost workdays in 2019 vs. men but a lower average in 2020.
SAN DIEGO — During 2019 and 2020, patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension lost around 8% of available workdays, according to research presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.
“PAH clinicians know the significant impact PAH has on patients’ lives,” Anna Watzker, MHS, associate director of outcomes research at Merck, told Healio. “This study emphasizes another and often overlooked dimension of that impact — productivity loss related to time receiving health care services — which reinforces the need to enhance efficient care delivery while minimizing the risk of complications.”
In a retrospective study, Watzker and colleagues assessed 1,174 commercially insured adults (mean age, 50.4 years) diagnosed with and receiving treatment for PAH between January 2019 and November 2020, to determine how the disease impacts patient productivity.
For each day a patient spent in the hospital on a non-U.S. federal holiday weekday or had an emergency/observation visit, researchers deemed it a full lost workday. Attending any other outpatient visits during the work week meant a loss of a half day of work.
In addition to finding the total number of lost workdays in 2019 and 2020, researchers wrote that they calculated the monetary value of work lost using “the 25th and 75th percentile annual household incomes from the U.S. Census Bureau by year, gender and age band to average workdays lost per patient.”
The 2019 cohort consisted of 70% women and 75.5% of patients aged between 45 and 64 years. The 2020 cohort had similar demographics, with 68% women and 81.1% of patients aged between 45 and 64 years.
During 2019, patients with PAH lost 19,525 workdays overall, which researchers noted is equivalent to 8.7% of available workdays. For each patient, the value of work lost was projected to be between $340 and $1,071 per month.
Compared with 2019, the total number of lost workdays was lower in 2020 at 14,738 days or 8.2% of available workdays, but the value of work lost per patient was similar, ranging from $318 to $1,034 a month.
“PAH is rare and progressive, and while the patients in this retrospective study are younger (50 years on average) and still able to work despite their disease, these patients spend a considerable amount of time on health care encounters,” Watzker said. “While they may have varying levels of benefits for paid time off in the U.S., 18 days of health care encounters makes a substantial impact on even the most flexible policies, potentially requiring leaves or unpaid time off to be leveraged.”
Researchers further split the cohort according to gender and found that women had a higher average of lost workdays vs. men in 2019 (18.4 days vs. 17.8 days) but a lower average in 2020 (18.5 days vs. 19.5 days).
“There is still a lot to understand about the impact of PAH on patients’ lives, especially when it comes to the burden of disease and the unmet need, and this study is only one aspect of exploring this topic,” Watzker told Healio. “It is important for future studies to continue to raise awareness for this rare disease and focus on diverse research questions on the indirect burden.”