PND61 – Association Between Non-Motor Symptoms and Health Care Utilization Among Patients with Parkinson’s Disease in the United States

To investigate the characteristics and extent of health care utilization among patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) with and without non-motor symptoms (NMS). Data were obtained from a US administrative claims database (SDI/IMS). Index date was 1 June 2010, and study duration was 12 months. Patients were required to have at least two PD diagnoses before the index date. They were subsequently matched 1:1 to control patients (no PD diagnoses) based on propensity scores derived from age and pre-index Charlson comorbidity index for each gender. In total, 127,630 patients with PD were matched to controls. Patients with PD had higher annual mean numbers of primary care (16.4 vs 12.3; p ≤0.0001) and neurologist visits (6.7 vs 0.4; p ≤0.0001) compared with matched controls. In the PD group, 48,823 patients (38.3%) had a diagnosis for at least one NMS, of whom 15,242 (31.2 %) were also treated for at least one NMS. Most frequently reported NMS were pain (27.2%), mood disturbance (depression, anxiety or nervousness; 12.7%) and sleep disorder (7.4%). Patients with pain, mood and sleep disorders (n=1,159), had higher total annual primary care and neurologist visits than patients with no NMS (50.7 vs. 17.2). Patients who received treatment for pain, mood and sleep disorders (n=118), had a higher total number of annual primary care and neurologist visits (66.6) compared with patients treated only for mood (26.0; n=3,233) only for pain (35.6; n=9,432), or only for sleep (30.6; n=676). Results of the study demonstrate that treatment of NMS increases health care utilization – patients with PD suffering from NMS had a substantially greater number of health care visits than those with no NMS. Results also indicate that there are substantial levels of undertreatment of NMS among patients with PD, with less than a third being treated.