Health care costs associated with Australian tertiary inflammatory bowel disease care

Introduction: We aimed to describe the total costs of illness for IBD patients and compare the costs of patients with active disease to those with inactive disease. Materials and methods: Resource use for IBD management was itemized for attributable costs (AUD) among all IBD patients over a 12-month period at an Australian hospital. Results: One hundred and eighty-three patients were included (87 ulcerative colitis (UC); 93 Crohn’s disease (CD); three IBD-unclassified). The median (IQR) annual overall cost was higher in the CD versus UC group ($15,648 versus $5017; p < .001). The difference in cost between CD and UC was influenced by the difference in outpatient costs for CD patients $9602 ($4311–$29,805) versus $4867 ($3220–$7249), p < .001). The cost of treating patients with active disease was $3461 ($1607–$11,771) and was higher in the CD versus the UC group ($6098 ($2168–$16,471) versus $1638 ($1401–$3767); p = .026) and was influenced by inpatient admissions. The cost of treating patients in remission was $2090 ($1552–$12,954) and was higher in the CD versus the UC group [$7977 ($1579–$14,304) versus $1848 ($1508–$6601); p = .236]. Conclusions: There is a discrepancy in costs of inpatient versus outpatient IBD management and treating active disease compared with disease in remission. Proactive care may help prevent disease reaching a severity whereby reactive management of active disease is required.