IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0145086.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Price of a Neglected Zoonosis: Case-Control Study to Estimate Healthcare Utilization Costs of Human Brucellosis

Author

Listed:
  • Oded Vered
  • Tzahit Simon-Tuval
  • Pablo Yagupsky
  • Miki Malul
  • Assi Cicurel
  • Nadav Davidovitch

Abstract

Human brucellosis has reemerged as a serious public health threat to the Bedouin population of southern Israel in recent years. Little is known about its economic implications derived from elevated healthcare utilization (HCU). Our objective was to estimate the HCU costs associated with human brucellosis from the insurer perspective. A case-control retrospective study was conducted among Clalit Health Services (CHS) enrollees. Brucellosis cases were defined as individuals that were diagnosed with brucellosis at the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory of Soroka University Medical Center in the 2010–2012 period (n = 470). Control subjects were randomly selected and matched 1:3 by age, sex, clinic, and primary physician (n = 1,410). HCU data, demographic characteristics and comorbidities were obtained from CHS computerized database. Mean±SD age of the brucellosis cases was 26.6±17.6 years. 63% were male and 85% were Bedouins. No significant difference in Charlson comorbidity index was found between brucellosis cases and controls (0.41 vs. 0.45, respectively, P = 0.391). Before diagnosis (baseline), the average total annual HCU cost of brucellosis cases was slightly yet significantly higher than that of the control group ($439 vs. $382, P

Suggested Citation

  • Oded Vered & Tzahit Simon-Tuval & Pablo Yagupsky & Miki Malul & Assi Cicurel & Nadav Davidovitch, 2015. "The Price of a Neglected Zoonosis: Case-Control Study to Estimate Healthcare Utilization Costs of Human Brucellosis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-10, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0145086
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145086
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0145086
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0145086&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0145086?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0145086. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.