Original article Burden of venous leg ulcers in the United States

Objective: To estimate the annual incremental per-patient and overall payer burden (2012USD) of venous leg ulcers (VLU) in the US. Methods: Beneficiaries with and without VLUwere identified usingtwo de-identified insurance claims databases: aged 65þ from a 5% random sample of Medicare beneficiaries (2007–2010: n � 2.3 million); and aged 18–64 from a privately-insured population (2007–2011: n � 8.4 million). The index date was selected as the date of aVLUclaim with no other VLUdiagnoses inthe preceding 12 months for theVLU cohortand as the dateof a random medical claim for the non-VLU patients. These groups were matched using propensity scores to account for differences in demographics, comorbidities, resource utilization, and costs in the 12 month preindexperiod.Medicalresourceuseandcostsincurredduringthe12monthfollow-upperiodwerecalculated for both payers. Drug costs and indirect work-loss due to disability and medically-related absenteeism were estimated for the privately-insured sample only. Annual VLU incidence rates were also estimated for both payers.