Sleep disorders add $13,000 a year to advanced Parkinson’s care costs

Parkinson’s disease brings a long list of difficult symptoms, and poor sleep is one of the most common. For people with advanced Parkinson’s disease, sleep problems can take a toll on both well-being and healthcare costs.

More than 75% of people with Parkinson’s disease report sleep-related symptoms, and up to 40% experience sleep apnea, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Excessive daytime sleepiness affects about 30% to 50% of people with Parkinson’s and becomes more common as the disease advances.

Yet little data exist on the clinical and economic burden of sleep disorders in advanced Parkinson’s. A poster presented at AMCP Nexus 2026 by researchers from AbbVie and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai aimed to fill that gap. Patients with a diagnosed sleep disorder cost about $13,000 more per year to treat than similar patients without one. The study was funded by AbbVie, which markets Vyalev (foscarbidopa/foslevodopa), a continuous subcutaneous infusion therapy for advanced Parkinson’s disease.

How the study defined advanced Parkinson’s

The researchers analyzed insurance claims from the Optum Clinformatics database from January 2016 to June 2024. They identified adults with Parkinson’s disease taking the equivalent of at least 1,000 mg of levodopa a day for a month or longer. Advanced disease was defined by medication dose rather than by a clinician’s assessment of disease stage.

Patients diagnosed with a sleep disorder in the year before reaching that treatment threshold were compared with patients who had not been diagnosed. Each patient with a sleep disorder was matched with a similar patient without one, and healthcare use and costs were tracked for the following year.

Of nearly 9,500 people with advanced Parkinson’s disease, about one-third (32%) had a diagnosed sleep disorder. The final analysis included 2,983 patients with a sleep disorder and 2,983 matched patients without one. Both groups averaged 74 years old, were about 61% male and were taking similar doses of Parkinson’s medication.

Patients with sleep disorders used more care

Over one year, patients with a sleep disorder had more:

• Outpatient visits: about 46 vs. 35
• Office visits: about 25 vs. 19
• Emergency room visits: 1.3 vs. 1.1
• Hospital admissions: 0.6 vs. 0.5

Sleep disorders added about $13,000 in annual costs

Total annual costs were $50,120 for patients with a sleep disorder vs. $37,060 for those without one. By category:

• Outpatient costs: $23,409 vs. $17,588
• Hospital costs: $15,867 vs. $10,560
• Office visit costs: $13,200 vs. $9,437
• Emergency room costs: $2,712 vs. $2,220

All differences in care use and costs were statistically significant.

The authors concluded that the findings underscore “the importance of timely diagnosis and initiation of optimal treatments to manage sleep in people with aPD.”

What it means for health plans

The poster did not examine whether diagnosing or treating sleep disorders earlier would lower costs. Because the analysis relied on claims, it also counted only patients with a diagnosed sleep disorder. With more than 75% of people with Parkinson’s reporting sleep symptoms, the 32% who had a diagnosis may represent only part of the patients affected.

For health plans managing an older, already high-cost population, the findings point to sleep screening as a way to flag members at risk for added hospital and outpatient spending.