Study: Alzheimer’s patients at higher risk for potentially avoidable hospital stays

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease or some form of related dementia were “significantly more likely” to be hospitalized for avoidable reasons, according to a new study published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Pei-Jung Lin, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Boston’s Tufts University School of Medicine, and her co-authors, compared Medicare claims data for beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s or related disorders with an equal number of non-Alzheimer’s patients drawn from a random Medicare sample.

The research found one in 10 Alzheimer’s patients had at least one avoidable hospital stay in 2013, with a total of more than 369,000 potentially avoidable stays being recorded. The study said this would add up to nearly $2.6 billion in Medicare bills in 2013. The costs of the avoidable stays were nearly even split between chronic conditions (53 percent of expenditures) and acute conditions (47 percent).

The results were reported at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto on July 25.

“The new results support that early Alzheimer's treatment—even with today's first generation therapies—has significant potential to benefit the person with the disease, and the economy,” said Maria Carrillo, PhD, chief science officer of Alzheimer's Association.

Compared with beneficiaries without Alzheimer’s or dementia, those patients were found to be more at risk for potentially avoidable hospital stays for both short- and long-term complications of diabetes, as well as hypertension. Alzheimer’s patients were less likely to have avoidable stays for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma or heart failure.

Lin said Alzheimer’s and related disorders seems to make managing multiple conditions more difficult and expensive, and hospitals should find ways to optimize how comorbidities are handled.

“Case management programs for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias should involve strategies to reduce avoidable hospitalizations in order to improve patient outcomes and lower costs,” Lin said.