Endocrine Abstracts

Aims: We present final Hellenic data from the INSTIGATE study on direct costs of care and resource use, over the 24 months after insulin initiation, in type 2 diabetic (T2D) patients.

Methods: INSTIGATE, a prospective European observational study involving T2D patients who initiated insulin during usual care, assessed direct costs of care over the 6 months prior to and for the intervals from baseline to 6 months, 6–12, 12–18 and 18–24 months after insulin initiation.

Costs of health related resource uses, ancillaries, oral anti-diabetic medications/insulin and the cost of hospitalization were analyzed after collecting data on individual resource use and assigning local unit costs (from 2006).

Results: 237 patients at baseline, 6 and 12 month visits and 229 and 227 patients at 18 and 24 months respectively were followed.

Mean total contacts with Health Care Professionals were 7.5 per patient during the 6 months prior to insulin initiation and 9.8, 5.4, 4.8 and 4.4 during the baseline to 6, 6–12, 12–18 and 18–24 month periods respectively. Although mean total contacts decreased from baseline to 24 months, increase in visits to specialists was shown (mean from 1.9 to 3.2 visits).

Numerical increase in median total costs per patient was observed at the first six months following insulin initiation. Cost of insulin was 199–224€. In the first 6 months median costs of oral anti-diabetic treatment reduced from baseline to 6 months (from 197 to 17€) and remained low while costs for Blood Glucose Monitoring increased sharply (from 60 to 146€) but somewhat lower at 24 months (121€).

Conclusions: In the first 6 months following insulin initiation, we observed more frequent use of specialist care and increase of diabetes related costs. After the first 6 months health care resource use as well as total cost of diabetes care slightly decreased.

Declaration of interest: I fully declare a conflict of interest. Details below

Funding: This work was supported, however funding details unavailable.