Search

Background: Previous investigations of multiple sclerosis (MS)-related healthcare have focused on utilisation of specific individual health services (e.g. hospital care, office-based neurologists) by people with MS (PwMS). Meanwhile, little is known about possible patterns of utilisation across health services and their potential differences across patient characteristics., Objective: To comprehensively analyse and identify patterns of MS-related health service utilisation and detect patient characteristics explaining such patterns., Methods: In 2021, we invited all PwMS insured by the largest insurance company in Lower Saxony, Germany, to take part in an online survey. We merged respondents' survey and health insurance claims data. We analysed MS-related health service utilisation and defined individual characteristics for subgroup analyses based on Andersen's Behavioural Model. We executed non-parametric missing value imputation and conducted hierarchical clustering to find patterns in health service utilisation., Results: Of 6928 PwMS, 1935 responded to our survey and 1803 were included in the cluster analysis. We identified four distinct health service utilisation clusters: (1) regular users (n = 1130), (2) assistive care users (n = 443), (3) low users (n = 195) and (4) special services users (n = 35). Clusters differ by patient characteristics (e.g. age, impairment)., Conclusion: Our findings highlight the complexity of MS-related health service utilisation and provide relevant stakeholders with information allowing them to tailor healthcare planning according to utilisation patterns., Competing Interests: The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: CT has received honoraria for consultation and expert testimony from Alexion Pharma Germany GmbH, and Roche Pharma GmbH. None of this interfered with the current report. PF has received speaker's fees and honoraria for advisory boards from Almirall, Bayer, Biogen Idec, BMS-Celgene, Coloplast, Genzyme, GW Pharma, Hexal, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Merck, Roche, Sanofi, Stadapharm and Teva. AS has no personal pecuniary interests to disclose, other than being the lead of the German MS Registry, which receives (project) funding from a range of public and corporate sponsors, recently including The German Innovation Fund (G-BA), The German Retirement Insurance, The German MS Trust, The German MS Society, Biogen GmbH, BristolMyersSquibb, Merck Health care Germany GmbH, Novartis Pharma GmbH and Roche Pharma AG. None resulted in a conflict of interest. The remaining authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s), 2024.)