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

Prescriptions Clinical Trial

Official title:

Impacts of a Physician-targeted Price Transparency Real Time Prescription Benefits Tool on Medication Out-of-pocket Costs

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04940988
• Other study ID #: QI-RTPB
• Status: Completed
• Start date: November 18, 2020
• Est. completion date: July 30, 2021

Study information

• Verified date: September 2021
• Source: NYU Langone Health
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial 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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 21401
• Est. completion date: July 30, 2021
• Est. primary completion date: July 30, 2021
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 100 Years

Eligibility

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

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Costs and Cost Analysis
• Prescriptions

Intervention

Other:
• Real-time benefits check
Prescribers practicing in outpatient departments assigned to the intervention arm will be shown popup alerts with their patient's insurance benefit design-specific out-of-pocket cost for the drug being ordered as well as out-of-pocket costs for up to 3 lower-cost alternatives if available. Alternatives will only be shown when available and when the patient and his or her benefit design information can be matched by the electronic health record system to accurately query out-of-pocket cost information.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	NYU Langone Health	New York	New York

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
NYU Langone Health

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Medication out of pocket cost per day	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.	Through study completion, an average of 1 year
Secondary	Whether an order was placed for a mail-order pharmacy	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.	Through study completion, an average of 1 year
Secondary	Days supply	A secondary outcome, also specified at the order level, is the days supply. Data will be collected through the electronic health record.	Through study completion, an average of 1 year