Grounding Coverage in Value

The impact of value-based benefit design on adherence to diabetes medications: a propensity score-weighted difference in difference evaluation

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the impact of value-based benefit design (VBBD) on adherence to diabetes medications.

METHODS

Health Alliance Medical Plans piloted VBBD for diabetes medications for a subgroup of 5400 enrollees in January 2007 while keeping drug benefits unchanged for the remaining plan enrollees. A difference in difference method (DID) was used to evaluate the effect of VBBD based on pharmacy claim data. Patients with unchanged benefits in the same plan were used as the control group. Adherence was measured by the proportion of days covered. Propensity score weighting was used to balance characteristics of the case group and the control group.

RESULTS

There were 71 patients in the case group and 5037 patients in the control group. The patients in the two groups had comparable characteristics after propensity score weighting. After the implementation of VBBD, the average copayment per 30 days of supply for diabetes medications decreased from $15.3 to $10.1 for the case group and increased from $14.6 to $15.1 for the control group. The probability of being adherent increased from 75.3% to 82.6% for the case group and was roughly unchanged from 79.1% to 78.5% for the control group. Propensity score-weighted DID analysis showed that patients with copayment reduction had greater odds of being adherent: odds ratio=1.56, P=0.03, 95% confidence interval 1.04-2.34.

CONCLUSION

A VBBD program that reduced the copayment for diabetes medications by 36.1% reduced the number of nonadherent patients by 30.0%.

Hospitalizations and deaths among adults with cardiovascular disease who underuse medications because of cost: a longitudinal analysis

CONTEXT

It is well-documented that the financial burden of out-of-pocket expenditures for prescription drugs often leads people with medication-sensitive chronic illnesses to restrict their use of these medications. Less is known about the extent to which such cost-related medication underuse is associated with increases in subsequent hospitalizations and deaths.

OBJECTIVE

We compared the risk of hospitalizations among 5401 and of death among 6135 middle-aged and elderly adults with one or more cardiovascular diseases (diabetes, coronary artery disease, heart failure, and history of stroke) according to whether participants did or did not report restricting prescription medications because of cost.

DESIGN AND SETTING

A retrospective biannual cohort study across 4 cross-sectional waves of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of adults older than age 50. Using multivariate logistic regression to adjust for baseline differences in sociodemographic and health characteristics, we assessed subsequent hospitalizations and deaths between 1998 and 2006 for respondents who reported that they had or had not taken less medicine than prescribed because of cost.

RESULTS

Respondents with cardiovascular disease who reported underusing medications due to cost were significantly more likely to be hospitalized in the next 2 years, even after adjusting for other patient characteristics (adjusted predicted probability of 47% compared with 38%, P < 0.001). The more survey waves respondents reported cost-related medication underuse during 1998 to 2004, the higher the probability of being hospitalized in 2006 (adjusted predicted probability of 54% among respondents reporting cost-related medication underuse in all 4 survey waves compared with 42% among respondents reporting no underuse, P < 0.001). There was no independent association of cost-related medication underuse with death.

CONCLUSIONS

In this nationally representative cohort, middle-aged and elderly adults with cardiovascular disease who reported cutting back on medication use because of cost were more likely to report being hospitalized over a subsequent 2-year period after they had reported medication underuse. The more extensively respondents reported cost-related underuse over time, the higher their adjusted predicted probability of subsequent hospitalization.

A controlled trial of value-based insurance design - the MHealthy: Focus on Diabetes (FOD) trial

Background

Diabetes affects over 20 million Americans, resulting in substantial morbidity, mortality, and costs. While medications are the cornerstone of secondary prevention, many evidence-based therapies are underutilized, and patients often cite out-of-pocket costs as the reason. Value-based insurance design (VBID) is a 'clinically sensitive' refinement to benefit design which links patient cost-sharing to therapy value; the more clinically beneficial (and valuable) a therapy is for a patient, the lower that patient's cost-sharing should be. We describe the design and implementation of MHealthy: Focus on Diabetes (FOD), a prospective, controlled trial of targeted co-payment reductions for high value, underutilized therapies for individuals with diabetes.

Methods

The FOD trial includes 2,507 employees and dependents with diabetes insured by one large employer. Approximately 81% are enrolled in a single independent-practice association model health maintenance organization. The control group includes 8,637 patients with diabetes covered by other employers and enrolled in the same managed care organization. Both groups received written materials about the importance of adherence to secondary prevention therapies, while only the intervention group received targeted co-payment reductions for glycemic agents, antihypertensives, lipid-lowering agents, antidepressants, and diabetic eye exams. Primary outcomes include medication uptake and adherence. Secondary outcomes include health care utilization and expenditures. An interrupted time series, control group design will allow rigorous assessment of the intervention's impact, while controlling for unrelated temporal trends. Individual patient-level baseline data are presented.

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first prospective controlled trial of co-payment reductions targeted to high-value services for high-risk patients. It will provide important information on feasibility of implementation and effectiveness of VBID in a real-world setting. This program has the potential for broad dissemination to other employers and insurers wishing to improve the value of their health care spending.

Prescription drug co-payments and cost-related medication underuse

Co-payments have been linked to the slowing growth in pharmaceutical spending over the last five years. However, patients with health problems frequently have difficulty affording their pharmacotherapy and fail to take their medication as prescribed. We examine the relationship between co-payment amounts and four types of cost-related underuse: taking fewer doses, postponing taking a medication, failing to fill a prescription at all, and taking medication less frequently than prescribed. We conducted a nationwide survey of US adults age 50 and over who take medication for a chronic condition. Participants provided information on 17 chronic conditions, medication they take for those conditions, and whether they underused any medication due to cost. We analyzed those who reported paying co-payments for their prescriptions (n = 2,869). Analysis involved multivariate logistic regression, with adjustments for survey weights and clustering. Our data show a strong positive association between co-payments and cost-related medication underuse. Although people differ in how they underuse medications, these behaviours are strongly associated with co-payment amount. Realigning the co-payments with cost-effectiveness data, also known as value-based insurance design, warrants further investigation.

Healthcare expenditures and patient satisfaction: cost and quality from the consumer's perspective in the US

BACKGROUND

Both cost and quality of healthcare are major concerns in the United States. Using patient satisfaction as a quality indicator, we seek to identify the relationship between healthcare cost and quality from the perspective of the community-dwelling population in the United States.

METHODS

We examined a nationally representative sample of 13,980 adults (age >or= 18 years) in the 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). Given the idiosyncrasies of the cost data distribution, a recently developed extended estimating equation (EEE) model was employed to identify the relationship between patient satisfaction and healthcare expenditure, after controlling for individual demographic covariates, co-morbidity profile, and functional and activity limitations. A series of sensitivity analyses were conducted, in addition, to verify the identified relationship. All statistics were adjusted using the proper sampling weight from the MEPS data.

RESULTS

Average annual healthcare expenditures for 2003 ranged between $3923 and $6073 when grouped by patient satisfaction ratings with a mean value $4779 for all individuals who rated perceived satisfaction of their healthcare. We found that there is no statistically significant relationship between patient satisfaction and total healthcare expenditure (p = 0.60) and a non-monotonic relationship is not identified either. All sensitivity analyses results revealed a lack of relationship between patient satisfaction and healthcare expenditures.

LIMITATIONS

Patient satisfaction might not reflect the quality of healthcare from an objective clinical standpoint. The identified cost-satisfaction relationship may not be extrapolated to other quality indicators. Due to the cross-sectional study design, no causal relationship could be inferred between patient satisfaction and healthcare expenditure.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study adds to the literature on health care cost and quality by suggesting that the improvement of patient satisfaction may not require additional health care spending.