Wednesday, June 22, 2016

How Much Should Clinicians Pay Attention to the Cost-Effectiveness of Prescriptions?


To what extent should clinicians consider “cost-effectiveness” in the choice of treatment?

That’s a question Psychiatric News posed to several experts following a report in Psychiatric Services in Advance that concluded the long-acting injectable paliperidone, a second generation antipsychotic, is not as cost-effective as haliperidone, despite having a slight advantage in terms of clinical effectiveness.

In the study, Robert Rosenheck, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale Medical School, and colleagues randomized a total of 311 adults with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder to monthly intramuscular injections of haliperidone (25 mg to 200 mg) or paliperidone (39 mg to 234 mg) for up to 24 months.

Results showed that paliperidone was associated with a small but statistically significant health advantage over haliperidone—as measured by “quality-adjusted life years.” The cost of paliperidone ran on average $2,100 more per quarter for inpatient and outpatient services and medication compared with haliperidone.

“The results of this study should encourage consideration of older, less expensive drugs, such as HD [haliperidone deconate],” Rosenheck and colleagues wrote. “[A] rational policy for treatment of chronic schizophrenia might limit use of the more expensive LAIs to patients who do not benefit from or cannot tolerate HD.”

In an interview with Psychiatric News, Rosenheck said the results should be useful to payers and policymakers. Clinicians also have a responsibility to pay attention to cost-effectiveness. “If psychiatrists don’t play a role in developing a scientific basis for cost-effectiveness, then the only people who are setting the agenda are those whose main interest is profit,” he said.

Jim Sabin, M.D., director of the ethics program at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, said decisions about allocation of resources for medications that are marginally more effective but significantly more costly can be made ethically and rationally within a system of care (as opposed to ad hoc decision-making by individual prescribers) that accommodates the imperatives of population health and patient preferences.

“A well-functioning system serves both perspectives,” he told Psychiatric News.

For more coverage of the Rosenheck study—including an explanation of cost-effectiveness methodology—see the Psychiatric News PsychoPharm article “How Much Should Psychiatrists Weigh Costs When Prescribing?

(Image: iStock/monkeybusinessimages)



How Will MACRA Impact Your Practice?

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) permanently repealed the old Medicare SGR formula and set in motion entirely new programs for quality reporting and new payment models. What will this mean for your practice? On Wednesday, June 29, from noon to 1 p.m., APA will host a live, free webinar to educate you about several key features of MACRA. Click HERE to register for this event.

Disclaimer

The content of Psychiatric News does not necessarily reflect the views of APA or the editors. Unless so stated, neither Psychiatric News nor APA guarantees, warrants, or endorses information or advertising in this newspaper. Clinical opinions are not peer reviewed and thus should be independently verified.