Economic Impact of CFS
May 14, 2008 by Sandy Robinson
Filed under ME/CFS
A study was published in Dynamic Medicine in April revealing that CFS imposes a substantial economic burden on the United States.
Dr. Leonard Jason from DePaul University, study leader, examined both community-based and tertiary samples of patients and found that the annual economic impact of CFS was $18.7 billion for the community sample and $23.9 billion for the tertiary sample.� Dr. Jason and his team used the estimate of 800,000 people having CFS in the United States, which is below the figure provided by the CDC.� The CDC says that approximately 1,000,000 people have CFS with as many as 4,000,000 possibly being affected.
This is only the second study that has ever been published that has measured the economic impact of CFS.� The first study was published by the CDC in 2004 and it found that the total cost of lost productivity was $9.1 billion.� But this study did not take into consideration the health care costs.�
The new study includes both direct and indirect costs.� Direct costs refer to medical costs like office visit charges, medical tests and medication costs. Indirect costs refer to work productivity losses, disability reimbursements, cost of services provided by caretakers, transportation and other expenses that aren�t direct medical costs.
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