TY - JOUR T1 - Healthcare resource utilization and direct costs of interstitial lung disease management in Germany JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.congress-2019.PA4721 VL - 54 IS - suppl 63 SP - PA4721 AU - Phillen Maqhuzu AU - Larissa Schwarzkopf AU - Michael Kreuter Y1 - 2019/09/28 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/54/suppl_63/PA4721.abstract N2 - Background: There is lack of evidence on the economic burden of interstitial lung diseases (ILD) in Germany. Our aim was to determine healthcare expenditure of managing different severity stages of ILD within 3 years after diagnosis. Furthermore, we wanted to display structure of costs of care and its triggering factors.Methods: Based on physician-reported health care utilization collected within the EXCITING-ILD registry, we quantified costs for in- and outpatient care as well as for medication using German unit costs. Costs of disease management were defined as costs of treatment and diagnosis. We included 246 patients and classified their ILD-severity using the GAP risk assessment system. Subsequently we ran generalized linear gamma regression to identify clinical and sociodemographic characteristics that influence costs of disease management in each GAP stage taking IPF and non-IPF-ILD into account.Results: Our sample comprised 35.0%, 25.2%, 28.8% and 11.0% of patients in GAP stages 1, 2, 3 and unknown. Mean costs per case over three years were 17,735€, 22,479€, 26,676€ and 22,013€ respectively. IPF was the covariate with the most substantial impact. Overall, IPF generated 9.72 times higher costs than other ILD subtypes. Across all GAP stages, IPF patients incurred higher medication costs (surcharge between 2.34 and 3.10), increased spending on outpatient care (surcharge between 1.03 und 1.31) and diagnostic procedures (surcharge between 1.11 and 1.30). Inpatient care for IPF patients was not more cost intensive than for other subtypes.Conclusion: The economic burden of ILD increases with disease progression. Additionally, the management of IPF has a high economic impact in Germany.FootnotesCite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2019; 54: Suppl. 63, PA4721.This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only). ER -