The economic burden associated with SSRI treatment failure in a managed care population.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to describe the economic burden to managed care associated with failure of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) therapy in terms of direct medical costs.


METHODS
A retrospective analysis of the PharMetrics database, a national managed care medical and pharmacy claims dataset of 1.9 million major depressive disorder patients between January 2003 and June 2005 was conducted. A pre-post comparison of annual medical cost increases following new SSRI treatment was performed and differences in mean cost increases for the SSRI-failure versus non-failure groups were calculated using t-tests and confirmed using multivariate linear regression.


RESULTS
The percentage of subjects with likely SSRI treatment failure was 30.7% (n=2,595). The two groups were statistically similar (p>0.05) in age, gender distribution and insurance status. The mean increase in total direct medical costs was $6,489 versus $3,257 for the SSRI treatment failure and non-failure cohorts, respectively. The major components of these cost increases were outpatient cost ($2,579 vs. $1,309) and inpatient cost ($2,862 vs. $1,532), between the SSRI treatment failure and non-failure cohorts, respectively. All differences remained statistically significant at p<0.001, even after controlling for potential confounders.


CONCLUSIONS
This descriptive study found that increased costs of major depressive disorder are substantial following the onset of a new SSRI treatment episode and significantly higher among patients with likely SSRI treatment failure.
Balkrishnan
Rajesh
R
Division of Pharmacy Practice and Administration, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. balkrishnan.1@osu.edu
Joish
Vijay N
VN
Yang
Tony
T
Jayawant
Sujata S
SS
Mullins
C Daniel
CD
D000328:Adult; D017281:Cost of Illness; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008329:Managed Care Programs; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D017367:Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors / Q000191:economics* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017211:Treatment Failure
D017367:Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors