Patients with multiple chronic conditions had hospital costs that were more than 19 percent higher than costs for patients with one or no chronic conditions, according to an AHRQ study. Researchers determined higher costs were driven by longer hospital stays rather than by higher costs per day. Authors used AHRQ’s 2012 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s State Inpatient Databases to analyze more than 1.4 million hospital discharge records. Hospital costs for ambulatory care conditions were 19 percent higher for patients with two or three chronic conditions, 32 percent higher for those with four or five chronic conditions and 31 percent higher for those with six or more chronic conditions. The findings suggest that some of the benefit anticipated in reduced preventable hospitalizations may be offset by cost increases driven by a rise in multiple chronic conditions.
Read more: “The Effects of Multiple Chronic Conditions on Hospitalization Costs and Utilization for Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions in the United States: A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Study,”. BMC Health Services Research.