Background/Purpose: AbbVie provides a Patient Support Program (PSP) to adalimumab (ADA)–treated patients to assist them with issues pertaining to medication costs, nurse support, injection training, pen disposal, and medication reminders.¹ Whether these resources impact costs associated with healthcare utilization has not been assessed. We aimed to quantify the relationship between participation in any component of the PSP and resource costs (medical and total).

Methods: Longitudinal, patient-level data on the utilization of AbbVie’s PSP were linked with Source Healthcare Analytics administrative claims data for patients initiating ADA treatment from 01/2008 to 06/2014. The sample included patients aged ≥18 years with a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, or ankylosing spondylitis who were anti-tumor necrosis factor naïve prior to initiation of ADA. Patients who enrolled in the PSP (PSP cohort) were matched to those who did not enroll (non-PSP cohort) based on age, sex, year of ADA initiation, comorbidities, diagnosis, and initiation at a specialty pharmacy. For the PSP cohort, the index date was the date of enrollment into the PSP program and their time to enrollment following initiation was used to assign index dates for the non-PSP cohort. All patients were required to have evidence of medical and pharmacy coverage for 6 months before/after their first ADA claim and for 12 months after the index date. Medical costs associated with emergency department, inpatient, physician, and outpatient visits (all-cause and disease-related) and total costs (medical costs plus drug costs) were compared at 12 months following the index date using t-tests and generalized linear models adjusting for key baseline variables. Patients with costs exceeding 5 times the standard deviation of the mean were excluded as outliers (52 for PSP, 64 for non-PSP).

Results: A total of 1,199 PSP patients and 1,187 non-PSP patients were included. Baseline characteristics were similar between cohorts. During the follow-up period, unadjusted analyses showed PSP patients had significantly lower 12-month medical costs than non-PSP patients by 23% ($18,322 vs $23,679; P=.003). Disease-related medical costs were 22% lower for PSP patients compared to non-PSP patients ($8,001 vs $10,201; P=.045). Total costs were 10% lower for PSP patients than non-PSP patients ($35,741 vs $39,713; P=.03). Adjusted analyses yielded similar findings.

Conclusion: AbbVie’s free-to-patient PSP was associated with lowering medical costs (all-cause and disease-related) and total healthcare costs.

Reference:

¹myHumira. Available at http://www.humira.com/global/ongoing-support.

« Back to 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/impact-of-abbvies-patient-support-program-on-resource-costs-in-crohns-disease-ulcerative-colitis-rheumatoid-arthritis-psoriasis-psoriatic-arthritis-and-ankylosing-spondylitis/