Increased Rx co-pays for statins linked to higher hospitalization rates

As patients face higher out-of-pocket costs for cholesterol-lowering drugs, they are less likely to take their medicine and more likely to end up in the emergency room or a hospital bed, concludes a new study from Thomson Medstat, a business of The Thomson Corp.

The study is published in a special issue of the American Journal of Managed Care. Researchers analyzed the health care use, costs and behaviors of more than 100,000 people who were prescribed statins, a common treatment for high cholesterol, from 2000 to 2003. They found that higher co-payments for statins made it less likely that patients would adhere to prescribed drug regimens - while lower adherence rates were associated with more hospitalizations and emergency room visits. In the two scenarios there was virtually no net effect on total direct medical costs.

Patients who adhered to their drug regimens had higher prescription drug expenditures but, because they had fewer emergency-oriented episodes, their total health care costs were not significantly different from non-adherent patients. A $10 increase in co-payment was associated with an 8.9% decrease in the probability of adherence for new users of statin drugs and an 11.9% decrease in the probability of adherence for long-term statin use.