Association of Anxiety With High-Cost Health Care Use Among Individuals With Type 2 Diabetes.

Objective: People with type 2 diabetes vary greatly in their use of high-cost health care resources. We examined the association of anxiety with high-cost use after accounting for depression and medical comorbidity.

Research Design And Methods: Using electronic health record data, we assessed past anxiety diagnosis, health care use and costs, demographics, comorbidities, and diabetes control status and complications during 2008-2012 for 143,573 adult members of an integrated health care system with type 2 diabetes. Multivariable regression models estimated associations between anxiety and emergency department (ED) use, total hospitalization costs, and high-cost status (i.e., incurring total health care costs in the top 20% among all system members).

Results: During 2008-2011, 12.9% of participants received a diagnosis of anxiety, of whom 52.9% also had received a depression diagnosis. After adjustment for covariates including depression, anxiety was positively related to the number of ED visits in 2012 (incidence rate ratio 1.27; 95% CI 1.21, 1.34), the likelihood of visiting the ED on a chronic, frequent basis during 2010-2012 (odds ratio 2.55; 95% CI 1.90, 3.44), and high-cost status in 2012 (odds ratio 1.29; 95% CI 1.23, 1.36), but anxiety was not related to total hospitalization costs in 2012 (relative cost ratio 1.06; 95% CI 0.94, 1.21; = 0.33).

Conclusions: Anxiety is highly comorbid with depression among individuals with type 2 diabetes and is independently associated with high-cost resource use. Strategies to improve anxiety management among people with diabetes hold the potential to also reduce health care costs.