Health Care Costs of Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias within a Medicare Managed Care Provider

In this study, the authors estimated the direct health care costs attributable to ADRD among older adults within a large MA plan. A retrospective cohort design was used to estimate direct total, outpatient, inpatient, ambulatory pharmacy, and nursing home costs for 3 years before and after an incident ADRD diagnosis for 927 individuals diagnosed with ADRD relative to a sex-matched and birth year-matched set of 2945 controls. The authors found that greater total health care costs among individuals with ADRD are primarily driven by nursing home costs.