Journal of managed care & specialty pharmacy
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Abstracts provide a forum through which authors can share their insights and outcomes of advanced managed care practice through publication in AMCP's Journal of Managed Care Specialty Pharmacy (JMCP). Of the abstracts accepted for publication, most are presented as posters, so interested AMCP meeting attendees can review the findings and query authors. The main poster presentation is Thursday, April 9, 2015; posters are also displayed on Friday, April 10, 2015. The AMCP 2015 Annual Meeting Expo in San Diego, California, is expected to attract more than 3,500 managed care pharmacists and other health care professionals who manage and evaluate drug therapies, develop and manage networks, and work with medical managers and information specialists to improve the care of all individuals enrolled in managed care programs.
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J Manag Care Spec Pharm · Feb 2015
Comparative StudyCost-effectiveness analysis of allopurinol versus febuxostat in chronic gout patients: a U.S. payer perspective.
Gout is a chronic inflammatory condition associated with poor urate metabolism. Xanthine oxidase inhibitors such as allopurinol and febuxostat are recommended to reduce uric acid levels and to prevent gout attacks in adult patients. Under budget-driven constraints, health care payers are faced with the broader challenge of assessing the economic value of these agents for formulary placement. However, the economic value of allopurinol versus febuxostat has not be assessed in patients with gout over a 5-year time period in the United States. ⋯ Febuxostat was found to be a cost-effective option compared with allopurinol based on a U.S. payer perspective.
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J Manag Care Spec Pharm · Feb 2015
Evaluation of quality indicators for Dutch community pharmacies using a comprehensive assessment framework.
In 2008, the Dutch Health Care Transparency Programme (Zichtbare Zorg) was set up to develop and apply quality indicators (QIs) for health care. These QIs serve a range of purposes and can be categorized into those for internal use--for meeting quality standards and to continuously measure improvement (formative)--and external use--to enable patients and health insurance companies to distinguish between health care providers (summative). In order to assess the validity of QIs, a comprehensive Indicator Assessment Framework (IAF) was developed. This framework specifies the following criteria for validation: content validity, absence of selection bias, absence of measurement bias, and statistical reliability. Because of the intended summative use, the IAF was used for structural assessment of the QIs set for Dutch community pharmacists. ⋯ When subjecting the QI set for community pharmacies to the requirements of the IAF, only a quarter of the QIs met all requirements. To increase the number of valid process and outcome indicators, meaningful aspects for the outcome of pharmaceutical care have to be defined, and uniform measurement of relevant processes has to be implemented.
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J Manag Care Spec Pharm · Jan 2015
Comparative StudyHealth care costs among renal cancer patients using pazopanib and sunitinib.
Pazopanib was noninferior to sunitinib in progression-free survival in a phase III, open-label, randomized clinical trial comparing the efficacy and safety of the 2 drugs for treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A secondary analysis of this trial conducted on patient-reported health care resource utilization (HCRU) endpoints revealed significantly fewer monthly telephone consultations and emergency department visits among patients treated with pazopanib over the first 6 months of treatment. ⋯ The findings suggest that health care costs were lower among patients with advanced RCC treated first-line with pazopanib versus sunitinib.
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J Manag Care Spec Pharm · Jan 2015
Comparative StudyCost-effectiveness of pazopanib versus sunitinib for renal cancer in the United States.
Current first-line treatments for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) include the multityrosine kinase inhibitors pazopanib and sunitinib. Both agents had similar progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in the COMPARZ trial (Comparing the Efficacy, Safety and Tolerability of Pazopanib versus Sunitinib); however, the adverse event profiles of the 2 agents are different. In the PISCES trial (Patient Preference Study of Pazopanib versus Sunitinib in Advanced or Metastatic Kidney Cancer), patients and physicians preferred pazopanib primarily because it offered better health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and caused less fatigue. ⋯ Results of this study suggest that pazopanib is cost-effective compared with sunitinib as the first-line treatment of patients with mRCC in the United States.