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The financial and social costs of delirium

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Key Summary Points

AbstractSection Aim

To review the published literature on the cost of delirium.

AbstractSection Findings

Every study has found that delirium increases the cost of care in every setting, in hospital, after discharge at home and in long-term care.

AbstractSection Message

Delirium results in increased financial and social costs which, when considered with the impacts on morbidity and mortality, support the call to urgently improve prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment of delirium.

Abstract

Purpose

Delirium is common with serious short- and long-term sequelae. However, there are no licensed treatments internationally and relatively little biomedical discovery with the target of finding a cure, with the invisibility or underestimation of the economic implications as a potential driver for this inertia.

Methods

We conducted a narrative review of published literature in English quantitatively evaluating the financial and social costs of delirium to the health and care systems, patients and their carers.

Results

Delirium increases the cost of the index hospitalisation as well as increasing the need for post-acute care and the demands on unpaid, often older, carers. Delirium may cause as much as 10% of all cases of dementia and the ongoing need for care of these people with dementia doubles the cost of delirium. Prevention of delirium not only reduces the cost of delirium but also may decrease subsequent rate of dementia.

Conclusion

The high cost of delirium itself as well as the resultant dementia warrants greater efforts to prevent delirium and discover effective treatment.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of the Australasian Delirium Association.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia

    Gideon A. Caplan

  2. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Gideon A. Caplan & Meera R. Agar

  3. Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

    Andrew Teodorczuk

  4. Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, Australia

    Andrew Teodorczuk

  5. Deloitte Access Economics, Canberra, Australia

    Jared Streatfeild

  6. University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

    Meera R. Agar

Authors
  1. Gideon A. Caplan
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  2. Andrew Teodorczuk
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  4. Meera R. Agar
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Correspondence to Gideon A. Caplan.

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Caplan, G.A., Teodorczuk, A., Streatfeild, J. et al. The financial and social costs of delirium. Eur Geriatr Med 11, 105–112 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41999-019-00257-2

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