Medicare just released a huge swath of data detailing 2013 prescription drug usage in its Part D program. The data, coming from more than 1 million health care providers, accounts for more than $103 billion in drug costs. It’s reportedly the most detailed list of drug costs the government behemoth’s ever released.
The broadly released data can be mined by the general public – for the first time ever – so as to improve transparency of drug costs.
“We know that there are many, many smart minds in this country,” Sean Cavanaugh, a deputy administrator at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a conference call. “We are excited to unleash those minds and see what they can find in our data.”
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The top ten drugs, by costs, are as follows:
But here the top ten are by utilization. They’re all generics:
It’s interesting to draw conclusions about the Medicare Part D populace based on the drug prevalence and costs. Most everything centers around heart disease, pain, diabetes and heartburn – the standard public health concerns that are so very preventable with diet and exercise.
For instance, lisinopril and simvastatin treat cardiovascular indications like hypertension and high cholesterol; levothyroxine sodium regulates the thyroid. After that come painkillers, GERD treatments and diabetes drugs. The list that shows the most money spent on specific branded meds follow the same trends – Nexium targets heartburn, Crestor’s for cholesterol, Januvia is meant for diabetes – though psych meds like Abilify and Cymbalta do notably make the list.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Medicare also charted the prescriber specialties that had the highest cost of prescriptions:
Given the indications in the first two charts, it comes as little surprise that the bulk of costs come from internal medicine and family practice – though the cost per drug is costlier in neurology and psychiatry.
