A Longitudinal Bayesian Hierarchical Model to Compare Health Care Costs Between Spinal Cord Stimulation and Conventional Therapy

• Activity Number: 611
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Medical Devices and Diagnostics
• Author(s): Sherry Lin* and Dat Huynh and Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov
• Companies: Boston Scientific and Boston Scientific and Boston Scientific
• Keywords: Spinal Cord Stimulation ; Joint Bayesian Modeling ; Cost Analysis ; MCMC

Abstract

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a chronic pain treatment that uses electrical current supplied by an implanted pulse generator to block the brain's perception of pain. It is often regarded as a treatment of last resort for patients suffering from chronic pain, utilized after conventional therapies such as medication and surgery fail to provide relief. Not all patients respond to SCS, and demand for health care resources after the initial implantation will typically decrease for responders but remain unchanged for non-responders. In this talk, we compare annual health care costs before and after SCS implantation using a longitudinal Bayesian hierarchical model, with a latent variable to capture the responsiveness of patients to SCS therapy. The changes in cost with responsiveness will be discussed along with patients' propensity to respond to SCS to better understand the cost savings of SCS relative to conventional therapies.