Estimating the long-term costs of diabetic kidney disease: an economic approach

Abstract

Healthcare spending in Australia has increased rapidly in recent decades, partly due to the prevalence of lifestyle related illness, as physical inactivity and ageing have become common. Diabetes is a chronic and costly illness resulting from poor lifestyle choice and ageing. In this study, we estimate the long-run cumulative costs of a complication of diabetes, diabetic kidney disease, using well-known techniques from health economics. We find that spending on treatment for diabetic kidney disease will amount to $9.2 billion over the next 30 years. Most of the cost from this complication comes from the clinical stage of diabetic kidney disease.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Kenneth W. Clements and Dr. Anh Tram Le of the Business School, University of Western Australia, and Dr. Wendy Davis and Professor Tim Davis of the Fremantle Diabetes Study, Fremantle Hospital, Western Australia. The author would like to acknowledge the UWA Business School for their generous support of this article.

Notes

¹ See Commonwealth of Australia Department of Health and Ageing (1998).

² See International Diabetes Federation (2003b).

³ National Centre for Monitoring Diabetes (2002).

⁴ See Davis (2004).

⁵ We used the diagnosed population as this is the number of patients who will receive medical treatment. We assume the undiagnosed population will not receive direct medical treatment for their diabetes.