Embargoed for release until: Monday, October 22, 2001
Malaika Hilliard 202/973-5896 [email protected]
Sharon Burns-Pavlovsky 202/973-2934[email protected]
Irritable Bowel Syndrome Exacts Significant Toll on Society Increases Burden on Medicaid and School Absences
LAS VEGAS (October 22, 2001) -- Two new studies on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the most common functional gastrointestinal disorder, detail the high economic and social costs of the condition in the United States. The findings were presented today at the 66th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology.
Irritable bowel syndrome is a specific cluster of chronic abdominal symptoms. Experts estimate that 10 percent of the population, including all racial and ethnic subsets and age groups, suffer from the condition. IBS is one of the most common diagnoses in primary care practice, and accounts for nearly one- third of all referrals to a gastroenterologist. One well-recognized epidemiological survey reported that people with IBS make 3.5 million physician visits, receive 2.2 million drug prescriptions, and undergo 35,000 hospitalizations each year.
In the first of the two studies presented today, investigators reported that the higher utilization of services associated with IBS, compared with the average Medicaid case, added a significant burden on the nation's public assistance health insurance program. In the second, researchers showed that children of IBS patients are absent from school more often than are children of parents who do not have the condition.
Increased UtilizationComparing a population of California Medicaid IBS patients with a matched group of non-IBS controls, Bradley C. Martin, Pharm.D., Ph.D., and co-workers at the University of Georgia collaborated with a team from Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation to find that the average annual Medicaid expenditure per IBS case was $2,952. For controls matched on age, race, and gender, the average expenditure was $1,991. (The investigators used ICD-9-CM codes to identify patients.)
In addition, the researchers observed that utilization of health services was higher across the board for IBS patients, including the number of physician visits and prescriptions written and the use of outpatient services. In fact, IBS patients visit physicians nearly twice as often as do controls (13.3 compared with 6.7 physician visits per person-year) and doctors wrote 50 percent more prescriptions for IBS patients than for controls (38.7 compared with 25.3 prescriptions per person-year).
"Our findings show that the higher cost of managing IBS poses an additional burden to the Medicaid system of at least $900 per person per year above the cost of caring for similar non-IBS ambulatory Medicaid recipients," said Dr. Martin.
Learned Illness BehaviorBuilding on previous research, which showed that children of IBS patients have significantly more health care visits than controls for both GI and non-GI visits, Rona Levy, Ph.D., and a group of psychologists and physicians from the University of Washington and the University of North Carolina, reported that having a mother with IBS was a risk factor for school absenteeism. They compared three years of school absences for children of women who met diagnostic criteria for IBS with those of children whose mothers did not have the disorder. As expected, the children of IBS parents were out of school significantly more often than were controls (11.2 days per academic year versus 7.6 days).
"These data are important because they provide additional support for the effect of learned illness behavior on children," said Levy. "In addition, the data demonstrate that these behaviors in adults have an impact on children's lives that extend beyond the realm of health care utilization, which previous studies have reported."
The ACG was formed in 1932 to advance the scientific study and medical treatment of disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. The College promotes the highest standards in medical education and is guided by its commitment to meeting the needs of clinical gastroenterology practitioners. Consumers can get more information on GI diseases through the following ACG-sponsored programs:
* 1-800-978-7666 (free brochures on common GI disorders, including ulcer, colon cancer, gallstones and liver disease)* 1-800-HRT-BURN (free brochure and video on heartburn and GERD)* www.acg.gi.org (ACG's Web site)
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