Short-Acting Beta-Agonist Inhalers Reduce COPD Budget Impact

A poster at AMCP Nexus 2017 found that use of short-acting beta-agonist inhalers with an integrated dose counter could reduce the budget impact of COPD.

“Short-acting beta-agonist inhalers with an integrated dose counters could potentially reduce healthcare resource utilization and cost as they allow patients to reliably track their rescue medication usage and adapt management of their disease, if needed,” Edward Kerwin, MD, of Crisor LLC, and colleagues wrote. “Integrated dose counters allow patients to determine the number of remaining doses available in their inhaler.”

In order to compare the budget impact of short-acting beta-agonist inhalers with and without dose counters in managed care setting, the researchers developed a budget impact model using data from retrospective database analysis of patients with COPD. They measured annual costs and costs per-member per-month for three dose counter uptake scenarios ranging from low uptake to high uptake. 

In the lowest scenario, researchers found that annual cost savings of $3,246,979 and $6,492,522 were achieved by years 2 and 3, respectively. Additionally in this scenario, per-member per-month spending was reduced by $0.27 and $0.54 in years 2 and 3 respectively. For the low-uptake and high-uptake scenarios, annual costs savings ranged from $162,932 to $12,984,537, while per-member per-month savings ranged from $0.01 to $1.08. 

The researchers noted that cost savings were a result of both a reduction in drug-related costs and lower disease-related costs such as a reduction hospitalization rates and costs. 

“The adoption of short-acting beta-agonist inhalers with an integrated dose counter in a managed care plan may result in... costs savings causing an overall decreased budget impact on total health care costs,” Dr Kerwin and colleagues concluded. —David Costill