Medicare Advantage Members Experience More Adherence-Related Problems

Medicare Advantage prescription drug plan members experience more medication-related problems, such as problems with adherence, when compared to other prescription drug plan members, according to a poster presented at ASHP’s 2017 Summer Meetings and Exhibition.

Julianne Kowalski, PharmD, a PGY-2 ambulatory care pharmacy resident at the University of Arizona, and colleagues sought to determine the occurrence of medication-related problems among Medicare Advantage members in order to identify trends in the data. They retrospectively studied medication therapy management data from 2014 to 2015. They collected data from 167,094 members from 68 Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans and 638,813 members from 28 other prescription drug plans. Data included plan type, the total number of eligible patients, the total number of problems identified, the number of therapy interventions, and the number of problems resolved.

Study results showed that in 2014 and 2015, Medicare Advantage members had more adherence problems compared with other plan members and had lower intervention acceptance for adherence recommendations. Furthermore, Medicare Advantage members had more guideline gaps than members of other prescription drug plans for both study years.

However, Medicare Advantage members had less safety-related medications problems and accepted more safety recommendations.

“These initial findings are encouraging, yet further evaluation is needed to identify whether other factors (eg, member characteristics, environmental factors) influenced the observed differences between health plans,” Dr Kowalski and colleagues concluded. “Finally, additional research is warranted to determine the generalizability of these results and whether these trends hold across longer-term investigations.” —David Costill