Impacts of a Physician-targeted Price Transparency Tool on Medication Out-of-pocket Costs

Completed

• Conditions: Costs and Cost Analysis; Prescriptions
• Interventions: Other: Real-time benefits check

• Registration Number: NCT04940988
• Lead Sponsor: NYU Langone Health

Brief Summary

The goal of this study is to evaluate whether presenting patient out-of-pocket cost information to the provider at the time of prescribing leads to orders for medications with lower out-of-pocket costs. The Real-Time Prescription Benefits (RTPB) tool has been implemented to randomly selected providers across NYU Langone Health's outpatient physician practices. The RTPB tool provides physicians with information about patient out-of-pocket (OOP) cost for medications at the point of outpatient prescribing. OOP is inclusive of any copay, coinsurance, and deductible that the patient owes given their prescription drug benefit plan. If the physician is submitting a prescription order and a clinically-appropriate alternative with a lower OOP cost is available, an alert with OOP cost information for the drug being initially ordered as well as up to three lower-cost alternatives will be displayed. Implementation of this tool will be analyzed to see if it will lead to reduced out-of-pocket costs on ordered medications when alternatives were available. Because effects could vary along many dimensions (e.g., specialty, drug class, insurance type), secondary analyses will be conducted and stratified along such dimensions. Analyses will be conducted at the prescription order level.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2020-11-18
• Study First Submitted: 2021-03-18
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-06-18
• Study First Posted: 2021-06-28
• Primary Completion: 2021-07-30
• Study Completion: 2021-07-30
• Status Verified: 2021-09
• Last Update Submitted: 2021-09-14
• Last Update Posted: 2021-09-16

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 21401

Inclusion Criteria

• Medication orders for which this match and query was successful and outcomes data was available.

Exclusion Criteria

• No patient-level exclusion criteria will be imposed

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
See alert	Real-time benefits check	The intervention group refers to medication orders placed by prescribers when practicing in an outpatient department randomly assigned to receive the intervention, which is implementation of the RTPB tool.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Medication out of pocket cost per day	Through study completion, an average of 1 year	The primary outcome, which will be measured at the medication-order level is out-of-pocket cost per day for a drug ordered. It will be computed by dividing the out-of-pocket cost of a drug by the days supply. Data will be collected through the electronic health record.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Whether an order was placed for a mail-order pharmacy	Through study completion, an average of 1 year	A secondary outcome, also specified at the order level, is whether a drug prescription was ordered from a mail-order pharmacy, since switching to a mail-order pharmacy often presents an opportunity for savings. Data will be collected through the electronic health record.
Days supply	Through study completion, an average of 1 year	A secondary outcome, also specified at the order level, is the days supply. Data will be collected through the electronic health record.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

NYU Langone Health; 🇺🇸 New York, New York, United States