Two studies in this month’s issue examine the effects of value-based insurance design, or VBID, which as currently construed, typically reduces cost sharing for services that have strong evidence of clinical benefit. The studies show the effect of reducing or eliminating cost sharing on patient adherence to medications.
One study, led by Harvard Medical School’s Niteesh Choudhry, examines Pitney Bowes’ efforts to get employees to stay on certain high-value medications. When the self-insured corporation eliminated copayments for cholesterol-lowering statins, employee adherence to the drugs increased 2.8 percent. When the company’s policy reduced copayments for the blood clot inhibitor clopidogrel, adherence climbed 4 percent.
Read the full article by Chris Fleming here.