Economic impact of a novel naloxone autoinjector on third-party payers.

BACKGROUND: Patient overdoses on prescription opioid analgesics in the United States continue to rise, resulting in increased emergency department and hospitalization costs. Opioid overdose is readily reversible with naloxone, a fast-acting opioid antagonist. A new naloxone autoinjector (NAI), Evzio, which does not require medical training to use, was approved by the FDA in April 2014. Payers must decide on reimbursement policies for this product. PURPOSE: To demonstrate to payer decision makers the costs and potential medical resource cost offsets associated with the utilization of a new NAI. DESIGN: A deterministic model using matched controls. METHODOLOGY: An Excel-based cost model was developed for a hypothetical health plan with 1 million adult members. Costs of prescription opioid overdose events for patients appropriately dispensed NAI were compared with matched controls. RESULTS: NAI prescriptions increased from 218 in Year 1 to 2,527 in Year 3. In Year 3, 86 NAI patients (and their matched controls) experienced opioid overdose events. For this period, fatal overdoses in the NAI cohort totaled 11.1 vs. 14.7 for the control group. In Year 3, 2.5 deaths (10.1-7.6) were avoided. NAI acquisition costs rose from $125,000 in Year 1 (PMPM = $0.01) to nearly $1.5 million in Year 3 (PMPM = $0.12).This cost was offset by medical resource savings of approximately $84,000 in Year 1, increasing to $975,000 in Year 3. The total net cost (NAI less offsets) in Year 3, when NAI uptake was assumed to plateau, was $481,000 (PMPM = $0.04). CONCLUSION: A deterministic model demonstrated that NAI acquisition costs can be offset through medical cost reductions with improved timely access to naloxone.

Comparison of human growth hormone products' cost in pediatric and adult patients. A budgetary impact model.

We assessed the economic impact to the United States payer of recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) utilization, comparing the relative dosage efficiency of marketed pen-based and vial-based products in a pediatric and in an adult population. A budgetary impact model calculated drug costs based on product waste and cost. Waste was the difference between prescribed dose, based on patient weight, and actual delivered dose, based on dosing increments and maximum deliverable dose for pens and a fixed-percent waste as derived from the literature for vials. Annual wholesale acquisition costs were calculated based upon total milligrams delivered, using a daily dose of 0.03 mg/kg for pediatric patients and 0.016 mg/kg for adults. Total annual drug costs were compared for two scenarios: 1) a product mix based on national market share and 2) restricting use to the product with lowest waste. Based on the literature, waste for each vial product was 23 percent. Among individual pens, waste was highest for Humatrope 24 mg (19.5 percent pediatric, 14.3 percent adult) and lowest for Norditropin Nordi-Flex 5 mg (1.1 percent pediatric, 1 percent adult). Restricting use to the brand with least waste (Norditropin), compared to national product share mix, resulted in a 10.2 percent reduction in annual pediatric patient cost from $19,026 to $17,089 and an 8 percent reduction in annual adult patient cost from $24,099 to $22,161. We concluded that pen delivery systems result in less waste than vial and syringe. Considering all approved delivery systems, Norditropin resulted in the least product waste and lower annual patient cost for both pediatric and adult populations.