Dallas, TX, February 3, 2017—More than
$41 billion a year in Medicare costs could be saved if all beneficiaries
achieved ideal levels for five to seven heart–healthy habits to reduce
cardiovascular risk, according to new research in Journal of the
American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American
Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
The American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 is a composite
measure of seven modifiable heart–healthy factors: cigarette smoking,
physical activity, diet, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol
and glucose levels.
Researchers estimated the annual financial impact of Life’s
Simple 7 compliance using 1 year of follow–up data from the Reasons for
Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, a national,
population–based, longitudinal study. They focused on Medicare claims
for 6,262 beneficiaries over the age of 65 with fee–for–service coverage
and no prior history of cardiovascular disease.
In primary analyses, researchers found:
- Only 6.4% of participants had five to seven ideal factors.
- Participants
with fewer Life’s Simple 7 scores were more likely to be women, black
or be unmarried, or have an annual income less than $20,000 or have less
than a high school education.
- Those with higher scores were
also less likely to have all–cause and cardiovascular disease–related
inpatient or outpatient encounters in the year following their in–home
study visit.
- Total inpatient and outpatient healthcare
expenditures were $5,016 less for participants with the most ideal
heart–healthy factors compared to those with the least number of
factors.
By extending estimates from the primary analyses to corresponding 2014 Medicare beneficiaries, researchers found:
- Participants with fewer than five of the heart–healthy
measures accounted for more than half of all inpatient costs each year,
and approximately one–third of total outpatient claims.
- The
potential annualized cost reduction is $41.2 billion for inpatient,
outpatient and total expenditures, respectively, if all Medicare
beneficiaries had five to seven Life’s Simple 7 factors.
“The actual cost for persons with fewer than five to seven
factors is almost certainly higher,” according to Kristal J. Aaron,
DrPH, MSPH, lead author and clinical data manager at the University of
Alabama in Birmingham.
“Skilled nursing facility, home health and hospice care, durable
medical supplies, and medications were excluded in this analyses; thus,
our study was limited to inpatient and outpatient visits for
beneficiaries with Medicare fee–for–service in the 2014 calendar year,
so this is probably a very conservative estimate.”
She added that the data suggests that public health strategies
and initiatives improve the number of Life’s Simple 7 factors across the
population and age spectrum, even those over 65 years of age “offer the
potential for significant cost savings, not just better health outcomes
and quality of life.”
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,
the Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and the National Institute on
Aging funded the study.
Starla Fitch MD @StarlaFitchMD 
Dr. Romie Mushtaq MD @DrRomie 
Yimchungru tribal dancers, Hornbill Festival, Kohima, Nagaland, India
