Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacist Prescribing for Managing Hypertension
2023
This study estimates the cost-effectiveness of implementing a pharmacist-prescribing intervention to improve blood pressure control in the US. A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted using a Markov model based on the pharmacist-prescribing intervention used in The Alberta Clinical Trial in Optimizing Hypertension (or RxACTION). Outcomes included cardiovascular (CV) events, end-stage kidney disease events, life years, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), lifetime costs, and lifetime incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). Costs were based on reimbursement rates, published literature, national surveys and pricing data sets. Quality of life was from published EQ-5D utility values.
Over a 30-year time horizon, the pharmacist-prescribing intervention yielded 2,100 fewer cases of CV disease and 8 fewer cases of kidney disease per 10,000 patients. The cost savings were $10,162 per person due to fewer CV events with the pharmacist-prescribing intervention, even after the cost of the visits and medication adjustments. At the population level, a 50% intervention uptake was associated with a $1.14 trillion in cost savings and would save an estimated 30.2 million life years over 30 years.
Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacist Prescribing for Managing Hypertension
Source:
Dixon DL, Johnston K, Patterson J et al. Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacist Prescribing for Managing Hypertension in the United States. JAMA Network Open 2023; 6 (11): e2341408. https://doi.org/10.1001%2Fjamanetworkopen.2023.41408