The Health and Productivity Impact of Chronic Conditions Report: Migraine and Other Headaches

Migraines are intense, frequent headaches that can last for hours and are often accompanied by other symptoms such as nausea and sensitivity to light and sound. Other forms of severe, chronic headaches may be early indicators of a later migraine diagnosis—particularly in cases where symptoms result in disability lost work time. Migraines not only degrade the quality of employees’ lives—they have business and economic costs for employers and the economy at-large. Helping employees manage chronic illnesses remains one of the most viable strategies for reducing employers’ healthcare and disability costs. IBI’s Health and Productivity Impact of Chronic Conditions series uses high-quality data to model healthcare, illness absence (i.e., sick days) and disability costs for populations of employees across different industries. The results provide a scalable cost benchmark that employers and their supplier partners can use to assess the potential savings from reductions in the prevalence of a condition, costs of treatments, and illness-related absences and disability leaves.