BACKGROUND

Little is known about economic and productivity loss by severity of asthma. We investigate health-care utilization, direct medical costs, and indirect costs due to productivity loss from asthma by severity.

METHODS

We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey database (2010-2017) of patients with asthma aged ≥12 years and categorized them into mild, moderate, and severe asthma groups based on symptom control medications. Study outcomes included health-care utilization, direct medical costs, and indirect costs of asthma-related absenteeism. We used zero-inflated Poisson regression models to estimate incremental health-care utilization and generalized linear models to estimate incremental annual direct medical costs compared to patients without asthma.

RESULTS

An estimated 139 million persons had an asthma diagnosis. Of patients with asthma, 77.1%, 22.2%, and 0.7% had mild, moderate, and severe asthma, respectively. Compared to patients without asthma, patients with asthma had incremental mean differences of 4.16 outpatient visits, 0.18 emergency department visits, and 0.07 hospitalizations per year. Annual direct medical costs were significantly associated with asthma severity ($3305 in mild, $7250 in moderate, and $9175 in severe asthma) ( < 0.05). Patients with mild, moderate, and severe asthma reported 0.76, 2.31, and 7.19 missed work or school days, resulting in $106, $321, and $1000 indirect costs per person per year, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Asthma-related direct and indirect costs are significantly associated with asthma severity, with severe asthma medical costs being about three times higher than mild. Controlling asthma symptoms is important to reduce the economic and social burden of asthma.