PURPOSE: Health care costs and cardiovascular (CV) outcomes were evaluated among US patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) or CV risk factors.
METHODS: Patients with ≥24 months of continuous enrollment were selected from the MarketScan Com- mercial and Medicare databases from January 1, 2014, to September 30, 2018. For the first qualifying 24- month period, months 1 to 12 defined the baseline period and months 13 to 24 defined the follow-up period. All patients had ≥2 T2D diagnoses during baseline. Two cohorts were created: (1) patients with ≥1 CVD diagnosis during baseline (“CVD cohort”); and (2) patients with ≥1 CV risk factor (“CV risk cohort”) and no diagnosed CVD during baseline. The percentage of patients with subsequent CVD diagnoses and annual all-cause, T2D-related, and CV-related costs in baseline and follow-up periods were reported.
FINDINGS: In total, 1,106,716 patients met inclusion criteria: CVD cohort, 224,018 patients; CV risk cohort, 812,144 patients; and no diagnosed CVD or CV risk factors, 70,554. During baseline, 40.2% of the CVD cohort had 2 or more CVD diagnoses. During follow- up, 10.5% of the CV risk cohort had evidence of CVD (ie, emergent CVD). During baseline, the CVD cohort had mean (SD) all-cause costs of $38,985 ($69,936); T2D-related costs, $16,208 ($34,104); and CV-related annual costs, $18,842 ($44,457). The CV risk cohort had mean all-cause costs of $13,207 ($27,057); T2D- related costs, $5226 ($12,268); and CV-related costs, $2754 ($10,586). During follow-up, the CV risk cohort with emergent CVD had higher mean all-cause, T2D- related, and CV-related annual costs than costs among patients without CVD (all-cause, $39,365 [$67,731] vs $13,401 [$27,530]; T2D related, $18,520 [$37,256] vs $5732 [$12,540]; and CV related, $18,893 [$43,584] vs $2650 [$10,501], respectively).
IMPLICATIONS: Costs for patients with T2D and either CVD or CV risk are substantial. In this analysis, ∼10% of patients with CV risk were diagnosed with emergent CVD. All-cause costs among patients with emergent CVD were nearly 3 times higher than those among patients with CV risk only. Because costs associated with CVD in the T2D population are high, preventing CVD events in patients with T2D has the potential to decrease overall health care costs and avoid additional disease burden for these patients.
