Investigators from Institute for Clinical Research Zero in on Managed Care (The Impact of Formulary Drug Exclusion Policies on Patients and…

Insurance Weekly News

Investigators from Institute for Clinical Research Zero in on Managed Care (The Impact of Formulary Drug Exclusion Policies on Patients and Healthcare Costs)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- New research on Managed Care is the subject of a report. According to news originating from Boston, Massachusetts, by VerticalNews correspondents, research stated, "In an attempt to increase the efficiency of their drug benefit policies, insurers are increasingly excluding drugs from their formularies that they deem to be of low value. Our objective was to identify and review empirical evaluations of drug exclusion policies and examine how they affected patients and healthcare costs. Literature review."

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Institute for Clinical Research, "We performed a literature search to identify empirical studies that evaluated drug exclusion policies. We reviewed each study to determine how the policy impacted patients (ie, if disease control or frequency, or severity of symptoms, were affected) and if healthcare costs (eg, drug expenditures and costs associated with physician office visits, hospitalizations, laboratory tests) changed. We included 26 studies pertaining to 27 drug exclusion policies. Twenty studies reported the impact of 21 drug exclusion policies on patients: 6 (28.6%) policies were reported to have had a positive impact, 6 (28.6%) to have had a negative impact, and 9 (42.8%) to not have impacted patients. Eighteen studies reported the impact of 19 drug exclusion policies on overall healthcare costs: 14 (73.7%) policies were reported to have reduced costs, 1 (5.3%) to have had a neutral impact on costs, and 4 (21.1%) to have increased costs."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "Although there were important exceptions, most studies found that drug exclusion policies reduced costs and did not negatively impact patients."

For more information on this research see: The Impact of Formulary Drug Exclusion Policies on Patients and Healthcare Costs. American Journal of Managed Care, 2016;22(8):524-531. American Journal of Managed Care can be contacted at: Managed Care & Healthcare Communications Llc, 666 Plainsboro Rd, Ste 300, Plainsboro, NJ 08536, USA.

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Med Center, Center Evaluat Value & Risk Hlth, Inst Clin Res & Hlth Policy Studies, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include P.B. Rane and P.J. Neumann.

Keywords for this news article include: Boston, Massachusetts, United States, North and Central America, Managed Care, Article Review, Drugs and Therapies, Institute for Clinical Research.