Cost Analysis of Antihypertensive Agents in Rural Population: A Prospective Study

Objective: To calculate the direct medical and non-medical cost, indirect non-medical cost of prescription involved in the treatment of hypertension in rural inpatients at tertiary care teaching hospital. Methods: A cross sectional, prospective and patient based cost of illness study was conducted in tertiary care hospital, Chidambaram for 12 mo and 267 new prescriptions was selected for the analysis. The data collected from the prescription included patient’s socio-demographics, hypertension stage, drug therapy consumption, anti-hypertensive category and cost of each drug. Drug procurement costs were calculated, by using the TNG medical supply list of the most commonly prescribed drugs, for each drug on a daily and annual basis. Results: Mean patient age were 60.6±10.5 y. 41.9% patients were having prevalence of hypertension at the age of above 60 y, 52.8% were males and 47.2% were females. The mean (systolic/diastolic) blood pressure was 141.8 mmHg (±15.2). Average annual direct medical costs were found to be ₹1,408,082.4, average annual direct non-medical cost was ₹9171.4 and the average annual indirect non-medical costs incurred by productivity loss were ₹10789.2. Conclusions: Direct and indirect non-medical costs have incurred high when compared with the other costs. The annual average total direct (medical and non-medical) costs per patient and total cost of illness were ₹1,417,253.8 and ₹27,993,470.0 respectively. Keywords: Cost-of-illness, Hypertension, Therapy consumption, Direct medical and non-medical cost, Indirect non-medical cost and morbidity cost