Estimating incidence and prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) in Alberta using administrative claims data (ABSTRACT)

Purpose: OA incidence and prevalence is rising due to obesity and longer life expectancies, which will lead to higher health resource utilization and have significant economic implications. In the course of developing a system dynamics model aimed at informing OA care planning in Alberta, we used provincial administrative data to estimate OA incidence and prevalence, examining the sensitivity of estimates to different OA case definitions.