Home health care utilization and costs for patients with Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a chronic, progressive disease with a prevalence rate of 1 out of 100 people over the age of 65, and 3 out of 100 for people over age 85. There is no cure for Parkinson's disease, therefore the goal of treatment is to control the signs and symptoms of the disease through prescription medications. At the national level, research is lacking in the area of home health visits for Parkinson's disease. The purpose of this study was to describe patterns of home health visits and estimate the costs of home health visits for patients with Parkinson's disease in the United States. Data from the1999-2003 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey were used to estimate the cost of home health visits for Parkinson's disease. To test for a difference between costs of home health visits for gender, a t-test was used. A series of one-way ANOVA analyses were used with each of the remaining demographic variables (age, marital status, income and region of residence) serving as the independent variable and the cost of Parkinson's disease as the dependent variable. A total of 2.6 million people reported having Parkinson's disease between 1999 and 2003. Over the five year period, these patients reported having 3,989,209 home health visits for Parkinson's at a cost of $1.9 billion. Because life expectancy is increasing and the risk of developing Parkinson's increases with age, this cost of home health visits estimation has relevance for healthcare insurers, providers, administrators, policy makers and Parkinson's patients.