The burden to the patient with Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is high, both in terms of health-related quality of life and health status. Exacerbations are associated with significant mortality, lead to frequent hospitalisation, and are a major determinant of COPD costs. Due to the natural history of COPD and its relentlessly progressive nature it needs long-term care, which means the range of medical and/or social services designed to help people with disabilities or chronic care needs. Hence designing the method to measure direct medical cost, direct non-medical cost, indirect cost and loss of productivity collectively, with reference to COPD, would be value-added information.

In this study, family, health system and societal perspective will be adopted which will be useful for informing policy decisions to local stakeholders and this data will be used to generate evidence to write further large studies. Interviews would be conducted for key stakeholders in the community to understand the burden of COPD to the society. Mixed method approach will give a comprehensive data to design the measure for estimating cost of illness for COPD for future cost of illness studies.

For more information, please see : https://www.ed.ac.uk/usher/respire/chronic-respiratory-disorders/estimating-the-costs-of-care-quality-of-life-and-w