Cost-Related Underuse of Medications in the Elderly

描述(由申请人提供)：自1965年颁布联邦医疗保险以来，该计划已排除了门诊处方药的覆盖范围，但医生提供的注射药物除外。现在人们普遍认识到，随着保险公司通过各种成本削减和成本转移措施来应对日益增长的财政压力，老年人面临着处方福利的侵蚀。医疗保险受益人必须依靠一系列补充来源来帮助支付药品费用。联邦医疗保险当前受益人调查(MCBS)每年对参加联邦医疗保险的老年人和残疾人的全国代表性样本进行管理，代表着关于美国老年人处方药覆盖率和来源的信息的黄金标准。然而，MCBS提供的与费用相关的不遵守药物治疗方案的信息很少，而且没有其他国家数据来源。虽然初步研究记录了自付药物费用、不遵从率和不良临床结果之间的关系，但迄今为止还没有国家研究探讨这种与费用有关的障碍是否导致慢性病基本药物使用不足、替代非处方药或替代药物或减少医生就诊。该项目将建立一个永久的、持续的国家数据资源，使政策制定者和研究人员能够衡量、监测和确定老年医疗保险受益人在使用药物(CRUM)方面与费用相关的变化。我们将开发新的全面的CRUM指标；在对约200名参加大型医疗计划的老年参与者的调查中验证这些措施；将MCBS中的措施整合到对约15,000名非医疗机构老年联邦医疗保险参保人的年度调查中(费用将由美国卫生与公众服务部、联邦医疗保险和医疗补助服务中心承担)；并分析MCBS数据，以确定CRUM与患者社会人口统计、健康状况和医疗条件、处方覆盖来源和自付处方成本的关联程度。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Since Medicare was enacted in 1965, the program has excluded coverage for outpatient prescription medications except for injection drugs furnished by a physician. It is now widely recognized that the elderly face an erosion of prescription benefits as insurers respond to mounting fiscal pressures with a variety of cost-cutting and cost-shifting measures. Medicare beneficiaries must rely on a range of supplemental sources to help with drug expenses. The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), administered annually to a representative national sample of elderly and disabled adults enrolled in Medicare, represents the gold standard for information on rates and sources of prescription coverage among elderly Americans. However the MCBS provides little information on cost-related non-compliance with medication regimens, and there are no other national data sources. While preliminary research documents the relationships among out-of-pocket medication costs, rates of non-compliance, and adverse clinical outcomes, no national study to date has addressed whether such cost-related barriers lead to under use of essential drugs for chronic illnesses, substitution of over-the-counter or alternative medicines, or reductions in physician visits. This project will establish a permanent, ongoing national data resource that permits policymakers and researchers to measure, monitor, and identify changes in cost-related under use of medications (CRUM) among elderly Medicare beneficiaries. We will develop new, comprehensive measures of CRUM; validate the measures in a survey of approximately 200 elderly enrollees in a large health plan; integrate the measures in the MCBS for annual surveys of approximately 15,000 non-institutionalized elderly Medicare enrollees (the cost of which will be borne by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services); and analyze MCBS data to identify the extent to which CRUM is associated with patient socio-demographics, health status and medical conditions, source of prescription coverage, and out-of-pocket prescription costs.