Across Canada, patients who sustain traumatic brain injury face potential unemployment and thousands of dollars of personal income loss in the years following their injury, according to a new study.
Malhotra is a neurosurgeon with Unity Health Toronto; the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital; and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, all in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Malhotra and colleagues conducted a pan-Canadian observational study using the Canadian Hospitalization and Taxation Database to identify patients aged between 19 and 61 years who were hospitalized with TBI and survived hospitalization between 2007 and 2017.
Following TBI, the adjusted average personal income loss was $7635 CAD in the first year after injury, $5095 CAD in the second year after injury, and $5000 CAD in the third year after injury. These amounts reflected relative reductions from preinjury levels of 17.9%, 12%, and 11.7%, respectively. Nationally, the estimated total incurred cost of TBI for 2007-2017 was $588 million CAD , which accounted for lost income and unemployment displacement among 25,500 TBI survivors and lost income for 1840 patients who died.
“Collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and data custodians will be key to unlocking the full potential of tax data in health research,” O’Hara wrote. “Such studies have the power to transform our understanding of the long-term socioeconomic impact of health conditions and inform more effective, evidence-based policies.”“We know that TBI can negatively impact daily functioning in other aspects of quality of life beyond work.