Sleep Duration and Health Care Expenditures in the United States.

Objective: To estimate the average incremental health care expenditures associated with habitual long and short duration of sleep as compared with healthy/average sleep duration.

Data Source: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data (2012; N=6476) linked to the 2010-2011 National Health Interview Survey.

Study Design: Annual differences in health care expenditures are estimated for habitual long and short duration sleepers as compared with average duration sleepers using 2-part logit generalized linear regression models.

Principal Findings: Habitual short duration sleepers reported an additional $1400 in total unadjusted health care expenditures compared to people with average sleep duration (P<0.01). After adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic factors, and health behavior factors, this difference remained significant with an additional $1278 in total health care expenditures over average duration sleepers (P<0.05). Long duration sleepers reported even higher, $2994 additional health care expenditures over average duration sleepers. This difference in health care expenditures remained significantly high ($1500, P<0.01) in the adjusted model. Expenditure differences are more pronounced for inpatient hospitalization, office expenses, prescription expenses, and home health care expenditures.

Conclusions: Habitual short and long sleep duration is associated with higher health care expenditures, which is consistent with the association between unhealthy sleep duration and poorer health outcomes.