WITHDRAWN Hospital Economic Burden of Heart Failure (HF) in France

OBJECTIVES: To describe the incidence and characteristics of HF patients hospitalized in France and to estimate the hospital healthcare consumption and the associated cost of HF patients.

METHODS: All patients aged > 18 admitted to a hospital in France with a diagnosis of HF in 2019 were included in this study, using the French National Hospital Discharge Database. The index date is the first hospital admission event for HF in 2019 and the follow-up period was set to a 1-year following the index date. Cardiac decompensation was identified using an algorithm for acute HF defined by the French Health Insurance Fund.

RESULTS: A total of 430 544 patients was hospitalized with a diagnosis of HF as a primary or associated diagnosis in France in 2019, with 20.2% and 9.9% of patients with preserved ejection fraction (pEF) and reduced ejection fraction (rEF) respectively. The mean age was estimated at 79.0 years old, and the sex ratio was about 1. The incidence rate of HF was 194 per 100 000. As coding for EF has been introduced since March 2019, EF information was available for 30% of the study population. Decompensation occurred in 3.3% of the study population. Regarding the health care consumption of overall study population, the mean number of hospitalization stay was 1.7 and length of HF hospitalization 10.4 days/patient/year. The associated mean cost was 8 341.3 €/patient/year. For pEF and rEF patients, no difference regarding the number/length of hospitalization was observed and the mean costs of HF hospitalization were 7 481.4 and 9 472.1 €/patient/year, respectively. Patients with decompensation during the following period had 1.1 additional stay and 2.8 days longer hospitalization/patient, resulting in 9 500€ additional cost for HF hospitalisation, compared to those without decompensation.

CONCLUSIONS: Cardiac decompensation and rEF were important factors of higher HF hospitalization cost.