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Expenditures in Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders among Veteran Clinic Users with Diabetes

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Abstract

Few studies have looked at the health-care expenditures of diabetes patients based on the type of co-occurring conditions of mental illness (MI) or substance use disorders (SUD). Our study analyzes the health-care expenditures associated with various diagnostic clusters of co-occurring drug, alcohol, tobacco use, and mental illness in veterans with diabetes. We merged Veteran Health Administration and Medicare fee-for-service claims database (fiscal years 1999 and 2000) for analysis (N = 390,253) using generalized linear models; SUD/MI were identified using International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition codes. The total average expenditures (fiscal year 2000) were lowest ($6,185) in the “No MI and No SUD” and highest ($19,801) for individuals with schizophrenia/other psychoses and alcohol/drug use. High expenditures were associated with both SUD and MI conditions in diabetes patients, and veterans with alcohol/drug use had the highest expenditures across all groups of MI. These findings reinforce the need to target groups with multiple comorbidities specifically those with serious mental illnesses and alcohol/drug use for interventions to reduce health-care expenditures.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the VAHSRD (Dr. Sambamoorthi IIR 05-016) and a VA Clinical Services Research and Development Grant (Dr. Leonard Pogach). The findings and opinions reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of any other individuals or organizations. The authors wish to thank Ms. Miriam Maney for assistance with data acquisition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management, VA New Jersey Healthcare System, East Orange, NJ, USA

    Ranjana Banerjea PhD

  2. Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management, VA New Jersey Healthcare System, East Orange, NJ, USA

    Usha Sambamoorthi PhD

  3. Center for Healthcare Knowledge Management, VA New Jersey Healthcare System, East Orange, NJ, USA

    Leonard M. Pogach MD, MBA

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Usha Sambamoorthi PhD

  5. Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachussetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    David Smelson PsyD

  6. Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Usha Sambamoorthi PhD

  7. University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA

    Leonard M. Pogach MD, MBA

Authors
  1. Ranjana Banerjea PhD
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  2. Usha Sambamoorthi PhD
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  3. David Smelson PsyD
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  4. Leonard M. Pogach MD, MBA
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ranjana Banerjea PhD.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 ICD-9-CM codes use for defining mental illness categories
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Banerjea, R., Sambamoorthi, U., Smelson, D. et al. Expenditures in Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders among Veteran Clinic Users with Diabetes. J Behav Health Serv Res 35, 290–303 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-008-9120-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-008-9120-8

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