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Disease management program prior to ESRD transition reduces medical expenditures, admissions
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AUSTIN, Texas — Patients with chronic kidney disease who have not transitioned to end-stage renal disease had reduced medical expenditures and in-patient hospital admissions when they had access to a specialized disease management program, according to a data presented in the poster session at the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings.
Laura Ten Eyck, PhD, said Optum, as part of its relationship with United Healthcare, provides a disease management program for patients with stage 4 or stage 5 chronic kidney disease (CKD).
“This is a population we already have their history and we know what happened. It is not something we usually focus on as we always look ahead,” Ten Eyck, PhD, told Healio Nephrology. “This program is before this [transition] even happens. It appears this program is having a positive impact on folks,” she told Healio Nephrology.
In the retrospective, intent-to-treat study, Ten Eyck and colleagues studied insurance claims data as to whether access to the specialized disease management reduced the medical expenditures among 27,750 adult patients with stage 4 or stage 5 CKD who did not yet transition to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). The patients had commercial insurance and were at 12 months or more away from transitioning to ESRD. Researchers compared the monthly medical expenditures and inpatient admissions between 7,718 patients who had access to the program and 19,832 patients who did not have the program available through their employers.
Overall, patients with access to the disease management program spent $228 per member per month less in monthly medical expenditures than patients without access to the program. Patients with access to the program showed a reduction of 156 in-patient admissions per 1,000 patients. Ten Eyck said that based on 1,000 patients, the medical expenditures would translate to a $2.7 million reduction in health care expenditures. – by Kristine Houck, MA, ELS
Reference:
Bannister W, et al. Poster 194. Presented at: National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings; April 10-14, 2018; Austin, Texas.
Disclosure: Ten Eyck reports she is an employee of Optum.