Chronic illnesses don’t only badly affect your health, they can also wreck your finances. A new study has found that patients with type 2 diabetes face significantly greater financial hardship compared with those without the condition

The study published in JAMA Network Open examined 166,285 adult patients at a Midwestern medical center in Ohio found that the probability of adverse financial outcomes was way higher among patients with type 2 diabetes, especially among “patients of Black race, enrolled in Medicaid, of Hispanic ethnicity, younger than 65 years, without earned income, and of female sex.”

The researchers who aimed “to investigate the association of type 2 diabetes with adverse financial outcomes and identify patient groups at risk,” linked electronic health records to credit records and wage data over a 4.25-year period from October 1, 2017, to December 31, 2021.

The findings were stark. For patients with diabetes, “estimated probabilities were significantly higher for any adverse financial outcomes (64.5% vs 49.9%), below-prime credit score (59.7% vs 45.9%), medical collections (36.9% vs 23.9%), nonmedical collections (38.4% vs 27.7%), delinquent debt (23.3% vs 15.6%), debt charge-offs (15.4% vs 10.1%), bankruptcy filings (2.1% vs 1.4%), and foreclosures (0.5% vs 0.3%).”

Patients with diabetes also had “more adverse financial outcomes (1.9 vs 1.2)” and “lower credit scores (mean 618.7 vs 664.2)” than those without diabetes. The “maximum amount of nonmedical debt in collection was higher ($1,875 vs $1,361), as was delinquent debt ($11,387 vs $7,630)” among diabetic patients.

“We found that patients with diabetes at a large Midwestern medical center had significantly higher rates for all 7 examined adverse financial outcomes,” the researchers wrote. 

The study added that diabetic patients also had “significantly higher dollar amounts of debt than those without diabetes, as well as significantly lower credit scores.”

The paper highlights how “financial hardships have been associated with mental health problems and higher mortality in the wider financial toxicity literature.” It notes that these economic pressures could be linked to behaviors like “rationing behavior, the lack of adherence to diabetes care recommendations, and lower health care use among these patients.”

Also read: FACT CHECK: Can scientists reverse type 2 diabetes by silencing specific brain neurons?