Chinese Herbal Medicine Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease Inpatients in China: Alternative or Complement to Conventional Medicine, a Cross-sectional Study

ObjectivesChinese herbal medicine (CHM), a typical type of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), has been used to treat Alzheimers disease (AD) with costs covered by Chinas urban basic medical insurance. Previous studies have demonstrated the treatment effectiveness of CHM for intractable disease and CHMs ability to reduce medical costs. There has been no research exploring the impact of CHM on AD inpatient hospital costs or whether CHM is a complement or alternative to conventional medicine treatments. We compared the medical costs of AD inpatients, CHM users, and non-CHM users to analyze whether CHM has increased or decreased the AD inpatient costs, to assess whether CHM was an alternative or complementary treatment. MethodsOur cross-sectional research was based on a 5% random sample from the 2010 to 2016 Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) and Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) claim data, yielding information on 1507 urban AD inpatients. Wilcoxon rank sum test and chi square test were applied to the medical cost data with an abnormal distribution. To control for confounding factors, such as demographic (age and sex) and medical costs, the influence between CHM costs and conventional medicine costs were analyzed by quantile regression. ResultsCHM users accounted for 79.83% (1203/1507) of the total inpatients. The median inpatient cost of CHM users was RMB13293.95 (USD2084.49), which was higher than non-CHM users (RMB8428.10/USD1321.53, P<0.001). The median CHM cost was RMB721.00 (USD113.05). Positive correlations between CHM users and CHM costs were found after controlling for confounder variables (Coef.=0.09, P<0.001). ConclusionDuring 2010-2016, nearly 80% of AD inpatients in our sample used CHM. Participation in CHM increased the total inpatient costs, pharmacy costs, and conventional medicine costs of AD inpatients over non-CHM users. CHM mainly plays a complementary or less alternative role to conventional medicine for AD treatment.