Health care resource utilization and costs of California Medicaid patients with schizophrenia treated with paliperidone palmitate once monthly or atypical oral antipsychotic treatment

Objective: To compare all-cause health care utilization and costs between patients with schizophrenia treated with once monthly paliperidone palmitate (PP1M; Invega Sustenna1) and atypical oral antipsychotic therapy (OAT). Methods: This was a retrospective claims-based analysis among adult California Medicaid (Medi-Cal) patients with schizophrenia having 2 claims for PP1M or OAT from 1 July 2009 to 31 December 2013 and continuous health plan enrollment for 1 year pre- and post-index date (PP1M or OAT initiation date). Baseline characteristics were reported descriptively. Propensity score matching with a 1:1 greedy match method was used to create two matched cohorts. Treatment patterns, all-cause health care utilization, and costs for the 12 month follow-up period were compared between the two matched cohorts. Results: Two well matched cohorts of 722 patients were produced with similar baseline characteristics. During the 12 month follow-up period, PP1M patients were significantly less likely to discontinue treatment (30.6% vs. 39.5%, p Conclusions: Patients with schizophrenia treated with PP1M had significantly fewer inpatient hospitalizations and associated costs with no significant difference in the total costs between the two cohorts. This study is subject to limitations associated with claims data such as miscoding, inability to examine clinical severity, etc

Patient Experience-of-Care Is Associated With Adherence/Persistence to Cardiometabolic Disease Medications in an Ambulatory Setting

Background: We aimed to investigate associations between patient ratings of experience-of-care and medication adherence or persistence to cardiometabolic disease (CMD) medications in an ambulatory care setting. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted using electronic health records and administrative data from an ambulatory care network in Northern California. We included managed-care beneficiaries (≥ 18 years) with a prescription for a CMD medication between 2010 and 2014. CMD medications included antihyperglycemic, antihyperlipidemic and antihypertensive agents. Within each class, we chose the first medication prescribed within 14 days of an office encounter that was associated with a completed Press-Ganey patient-experience survey. Primary outcome measures were adherence (proportion of days covered ≥ 0.80) and persistence (no gap in pharmacy fills \u3e 1.5× of a day’s supply). The main predictor variables were experience-of-care domains, which comprised health care providers’ (a) explanation about problems or conditions; (b) effort to include patients in treatment decisions; (c) information about medications; and (d) information about follow-up care. Experience-of-care was rated on a scale of 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good). Multivariable logistic regression models were fitted to assess associations between adherence or persistence (yes/no) and ratings for each experience-of-care domain (dichotomized as 5 vs \u3c 5), with statistical adjustment for important patient, prescription and provider characteristics. Odds ratios (ORs) were generated. Results: Eligibility criteria were met by 5,045 patients. The majority of patients were ≥ 65 years old (61.8%); median of CMD medications was 2. Patients receiving antihyperglycemic medications had higher odds of adherence when they had better experience-of-care with “inclusion in treatment decisions” (OR: 1.64) and “information about follow-up care” (OR: 1.60). Patients receiving antihyperlipidemic medications had higher odds of persistence when they had better experiences-of-care within each domain (range of ORs: 1.38–1.57). Patients receiving antihypertensive medications had higher odds of persistence when they had better experiences-of-care with “inclusion in treatment decisions” (OR: 1.52) and “information about medications” (OR: 1.55). Conclusion: In an ambulatory care setting, better experience-of-care with a health care provider in making shared treatment decisions was consistently a positive predictor of adherence/persistence. The relationship between other domains of experience-of-care and adherence/persistence differed by therapeutic class. Improving adherence or persistence to CMD medications through better patient experiences with their health care providers will likely require tailored approaches