Study: HMO Patients May Not Get New Arthritis Medications

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis who are covered by an HMO may not have access to new arthritis medications, according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting in New Orleans.

Health maintenance organizations (HMOs) lower the cost of rheumatoid arthritis care by reducing the use of new medications, not by lowering the number of hospital admissions or surgeries, the researchers said.

Studies of HMOs related to access to quality care have traditionally been performed on healthy populations and have shown that HMOs lower costs by cutting hospital stays. However, the impact of HMOs on patients with rheumatoid arthritis do not find this to be the case.

In a study of 493 patients, researchers analyzed whether patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving care from an HMO are less likely to use new medicines such as anti-TNF drugs (etanercept or infliximab) or COX-2 inhibitors to treat their condition. Researchers found that patients with rheumatoid arthritis who participate in HMOs were significantly less likely to receive any form of the two drugs.

"In recent years, several expensive new medications have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the care of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. This study indicates that rheumatoid arthritis patients in HMOs are much less likely to receive these new medications," said Edward Yelin, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Health Policy, University of California, San Francisco and a lead investigator in the study.

"Since we had previously found that HMOs do not reduce the use of the hospital or surgery for such patients, controlling medications may be the way that they seek to reduce the costs of treating people with this disease," Yekub said.

Other sources: American College of Rheumatology