Preferences for treatment among adolescents with Type 1 diabetes: a national study using a discrete choice experiment model

Understanding patient cost-sharing thresholds for diabetes treatment attributes via a discrete choice experiment

BACKGROUND: The process used to prefer certain products across drug classes for diabetes is generally focused on comparative effectiveness and cost. However, payers rarely tie patient preference for treatment attributes to formulary management resulting in a misalignment of value defined by providers, payers, and patients. OBJECTIVES: To explore patients' willingness to pay (WTP) for the predetermined high-value and low-value type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) treatments within a health plan. METHODS: A cross-sectional discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey was used to determine patient preference for the benefit, risk, and cost attributes of T2DM treatments. A comprehensive literature review of patient preference studies in diabetes and a review of guidelines and medical literature identified study attributes. Patients and diabetes experts were interviewed and instructed to identify, prioritize, and comment on which attributes of diabetes treatments were most important to T2DM patients. The patients enrolled in a health plan were asked to respond to the survey. A multinomial logit model was developed to determine the relative importance and the patient's WTP of each attribute. The patients' relative values based on WTPs for T2DM treatments were calculated and compared with the treatments by a health plan. RESULTS: A total of 7 attributes were selected to develop a web-based DCE questionnaire survey. The responses from a total of 58 patients were analyzed. Almost half (48.3%) of the respondents took oral medications and injections for T2DM. The most prevalent side effects due to diabetes medications were gastrointestinal (43.1%), followed by weight gain (39.7%) and nausea (32.8%). Patients were willing to pay more for treatments with proven cardiovascular benefit and for the risk reduction of hospitalization from heart failure. On the other hand, they would pay less for treatments with higher gastrointestinal side effects. Patients were willing to pay the most for sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor and glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist agents and the least for dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors and thiazolidinediones. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides information to better align patient, provider, and payer preferences in both benefit design and value-based formulary strategy for diabetes treatments. A preferred placement of treatments with cardiovascular benefits and lower adverse gastrointestinal side effects may lead to increased adherence to medications and improved clinical outcomes at a lower overall cost to both patients and their health plan. DISCLOSURES: This study was supported by a grant from the PhRMA Foundation.

Methods for Conducting Stated Preference Research with Children and Adolescents in Health: A Scoping Review of the Application of Discrete Choice Experiments

BACKGROUND

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a common method used to describe and quantitatively assess preferences in health applications. Increasingly, DCEs have been used to elicit preferences from children and adolescents and generate evidence to inform policies affecting this population.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this review was to summarize and describe the application of DCEs conducted with children and adolescents and describe author-reported age-specific considerations in design, implementation, and analysis.

METHODS

A scoping review was conducted using a 'pearl-growing' technique whereby the reference lists of existing systematic reviews of DCEs were used to identify potential studies conducted with children or adolescents as respondents published between 1990 and 2017. This list was supplemented with an updated electronic search using the same strategy as the initial reviews to identify studies from 2017 to 2020.

RESULTS

Of 480 studies identified, 19 were included; topics included vaccines (32%), drugs/medical devices (26%), treatment or health promotion interventions/programs (21%), warning labels on cigarettes/nicotine products (10%), and preferences for physical activity and healthy food choices (10%). The youngest reported age for independent DCE completion was 8 years. Approaches to assessing validity and reliability of choices were consistent with best practices for the conduct of DCEs. Reported age-specific considerations included use of visual aids, age-appropriate language, reducing task complexity and cognitive burden, and exploration of interpretation of willingness-to-pay.

CONCLUSION

The number of DCEs conducted with children and adolescents has increased in recent years. Detailed explanation of why reported age-specific considerations were necessary, how they could be used to interpret results, or to understand the appropriateness of this methodology for different age groups was limited. Despite a recognition of the need for special consideration when conducting DCEs in this population, the unique issues in the context of age-specific considerations are largely unexplored, and further research is required. Moving forward, stated preference research conducted with children and adolescents should report in more detail methods of recruitment, results of validity assessments, and provide specific reflection on the extent to which modeled results are consistent with expectations and underlying theory.

Patients' preferences for health insurance coverage of new technologies for treating chronic diseases in China: a discrete choice experiment

OBJECTIVES

Our study aimed to inform insurance decision-making in China by investigating patients' preferences for insurance coverage of new technologies for treating chronic diseases.

DESIGN

We identified six attributes of new medical technologies for treating chronic diseases and used Bayesian-efficient design to generate choice sets for a discrete choice experiment (DCE). After conducting the DCE, we analysed the data by mixed logit regression to examine patient-reported preferences for each attribute.

SETTING

The DCE was conducted with patients in six tertiary hospitals from four cities in Jiangsu province.

PARTICIPANTS

Patients aged 18 years or older with a history of diabetes or hypertension and taking medications regularly for more than 1 year were recruited (n=408).

RESULTS

The technology attributes regarding expected gains in health outcomes from the treatment, high likelihood of effective treatment and low incidence of serious adverse events were significant, positive predictors of choice by the study patients (p<0.01). The out-of-pocket cost was a significant, negative attribute for the entire study sample (β = -0.258, p<0.01) and for the patients with Urban-Rural Residents Basic Medical Insurance (URRBMI) (β = -0.511, p<0.01), but not for all the patients with Urban Employees Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) (β = -0.071, p>0.05). The severity of target disease was valued by patients with lower EQ-5D-5L index value as well as URRBMI enrollees.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients highly valued the health benefits and risks of new technologies, which were closely linked to their feelings of disease and perceptions of health-related quality of life. However, there existed heterogeneity in preferences between URRBMI and UEBMI patients. Further efforts should be made to reduce the gap between insurance schemes and make safe and cost-effective new technologies as a priority for health insurance reimbursement.