Patient education after stoma creation may reduce health-care costs

INTRODUCTION: Researchers are urged to include health-economic assessments when exploring the benefits and drawbacks of a new treatment. The aim of the study was to assess the costs associated with the establishment of a new patient education programme for patients with a stoma.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Following a previous case-control study that explored the effect of patient education for stoma patients, we set out to examine the costs related to such a patient education programme. The primary outcome was disease-specific health-related quality of life measured with the Ostomy Adjustment Scale six months after surgery. The secondary outcome was generic health-related quality of life measured with Short Form (SF)-36. In this secondary analysis, we calculated direct health-care costs for the first six months post-operatively from the perspective of the health-care system, including costs related to the hospital as well as primary health care.

RESULTS: The overall cost related to establishing a patient education programme showed no significant increase in the overall average costs. However, we found a significant reduction in costs related to unplanned readmissions (p = 0.01) as well as a reduction in visits to the general practitioner (p = 0.05).

CONCLUSION: Establishing a patient education programme - which increased quality of life - will probably not increase the overall costs associated with the patient course.

FUNDING: The study received financial support from Søster Inge Marie Dahlgaards Fond, Diakonissestiftelsen, Denmark, and from Aase and Ejnar Danielsens Foundation, Denmark.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT01154725.