Adjustable Gastric Band Survey Study

While there has been considerable energy focused on the costs and effectiveness of bariatric surgery, there has been little systematically-gathered evidence on the non-surgical care and healthcare expenditures for similarly burdened patients. The economic burden and clinical impact of both need to be more carefully defined to help guide DOD decision making regarding obesity care. Understanding the cost effectiveness of obesity treatments is also critical given the cost of treatment procedures, their potential for saving future costs related to co-morbid health conditions and worker productivity and the growing population of operative candidates.

This study will provide a comprehensive assessment of the burden and costs of operative and non-operative obesity care across all regions in the U.S. where the Department of Defense (DOD) authorizes care. The development of economic assessment tools will allow health policy experts, purchasers and payers of healthcare, clinicians and patients to determine the utility and cost-effectiveness of available treatment strategies. These economic considerations are relevant to the competing crises of spiraling health care costs and the loss of productivity related to obesity.

The specific purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive assessment of the burden and costs of operative and non-operative obesity care to develop a set of economic assessment tools that will allow health policy experts, purchasers and payers of healthcare, clinicians and patients to determine the utility and cost-effectiveness of available treatment strategies for managing obesity. Utility refers to qualitative components affected by clinical conditions such as individual's perceptions of quality of life, ability to take care of one-self, or ability to work/be productive. We anticipate that utility changes greatly for people who are able to achieve weight loss, but the differences or degree to which operative and non-operative weight loss treatments affects utility is not well known.

In particular, less is known about the effect of Adjustable Gastric Band (AGB) surgery on utility because it has only emerged as a predominant form of surgical treatment in the United States approximately within the last five years - for example, the first AGB surgery at UWMC was only performed in April 2007. In addition, assessment of cost-effectiveness of treatments requires understanding healthcare use after treatment (i.e. how many follow-up visits do you have with a doctor because of your surgical treatment) and AGB requires frequent follow-up visits in the first three years to make the surgical treatment effective. There is little information or research reporting the actual frequency of which patients are receiving follow-up care after AGB surgery, the cost for that care (is it a patient cost or insurance covered), or whether frequency of follow-up care affects long-term weight loss or health outcomes.

While the original procedures of our related study (IRB #35310, Committee E/A) only included secondary analysis of existing datasets, we have found very little information about qualitative utility or use/frequency of follow-up care for AGB patients and feel these are important aspects for modeling treatment choices for patients considering AGB. By adding a survey component, we will capture these data elements that are otherwise not found in literature or administrative datasets.