Assessing the geographical distribution of comorbidity among commercially insured individuals in South Africa.

BMC Public Health
Cristina Mannie, Hadi Kharrazi

Abstract

Comorbidities are strong predictors of current and future healthcare needs and costs; however, comorbidities are not evenly distributed geographically. A growing need has emerged for comorbidity surveillance that can inform decision-making. Comorbidity-derived risk scores are increasingly being used as valuable measures of individual health to describe and explain disease burden in populations. This study assessed the geographical distribution of comorbidity and its associated financial implications among commercially insured individuals in South Africa (SA). A retrospective, cross-sectional analysis was performed comparing the geographical distribution of comorbidities for 2.6 million commercially insured individuals over 2016-2017, stratified by geographical districts in SA. We applied the Johns Hopkins ACG® System across the insurance claims data of a large health plan administrator in SA to measure comorbidity as a risk score for each individual. We aggregated individual risk scores to determine the average risk score per district, also known as the comorbidity index (CMI), to describe the overall disease burden of each district. We observed consistently high CMI scores in districts of the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal provi...Continue Reading

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