Insomnia costs employers big bucks Meredith Cohn Baltimore Sun

Aggregate Costs Insomnia is costing the country million days of work, or 7.8 days per worker, according to a new study in the September issue of the journal Sleep (see article in same folder).Sleep The cost is $63.2 billion in lost productivity, or $2,280 per worker. The results, funded by pharmaceutical companies, come from a national sampling of 7,428 employees and provide a clearer picture that existing estimates, which were derived from smaller samples or estimates based on those being treated for insomnia.

!!! Shocked !!! The results of the study -- funded by pharmaceutical companies -- come from a national sampling of 7,428 employees. "We were shocked," said lead author Ronald C. Kessler, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. "It's an underappreciated problem. Americans are not missing work because of insomnia. They are still going to their jobs but accomplishing less because they're tired." The costs, he said, may justify screening and treatment programs for workers. Study authors said the average cost of treating the condition ranges from $200 annually for a generic sleeping pill to $1,200 for behavior therapy. They estimated just more than 23% of workers have insomnia, and prevalence was higher among women than men.

How Study Was Done Self Reports Broadly defined insomnia was assessed with the Brief Insomnia Questionnaire (BIQ). Work absenteeism and presenteeism (low on-the-job work performance defined in the metric of lost workday equivalents) were assessed with the WHO Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ). Regression analysis examined associations between insomnia and HPQ scores controlling 26 comorbid conditions based on self-report and medical/pharmacy claims records.

Findings The estimated prevalence of insomnia was 23.2%. Insomnia was significantly associated with lost work performance due to presenteeism (χ 1 2 = 39.5, P < 0.001) but not absenteeism (χ 1 2 = 3.2, P = 0.07). An annualized individual-level association of insomnia with presenteeism equivalent to 11.3 days of lost work performance. This estimate decreased to 7.8 days when controls were introduced for comorbid conditions. The individual-level human capital value of this net estimate was $2,280. If we provisionally assume these estimates generalize to the total US workforce, they are equivalent to annualized population-level estimates of days and $63.2 billion.

Wage Bill The Economics Assume that workers are hired in at market wage, determined by value of marginal product. With presenteeism, workers’ VMP  Leads to loss as noted. Labor Wage VMP W0W0 Loss VMP