Estimating the health-care usage associated with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis in an older adult population in Ireland

Background: An ageing population leads to increasing prevalence of age-related chronic conditions that present challenges to the health-care services. Despite this, in countries including Ireland, little is known about the health-care impact of conditions such as osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis amongst older adults. Methods: A series of count models are developed to investigate the incremental health-care usage of individuals with either osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis on the use of general practitioners (GP) services, outpatients'services, accident and emergency visits and inpatient nights. Results: Both types of arthritic conditions lead to increased usage of GP and outpatients'services but not other hospital services. Differences in entitlements to care, as captured by the presence of a medical card in Ireland, lead to different health-care usage among arthritis sufferers. Translating the additional utilization into cost suggests a combined incremental annual cost of both types of arthritis of €13.6 million. Conclusions: Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis present challenges to health-care services in the context of an ageing population. In the case of Ireland the burden falls predominantly on primary health-care and outpatient services. Within the context of changing health-care service provision in Ireland, the results of this study have implications for future planning of service delivery.