OBJECTIVES To (1) provide medication therapy management (MTM) services to patients, (2) measure the clinical effects associated with the provision of MTM services, (3) measure the percent of patients achieving Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) goals for hypertension and hyperlipidemia in the MTM services intervention group in relationship to a comparison group who did no...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether a multi-interventional program can limit increases in prescription drug expenditures while maintaining utilization of needed medications. STUDY DESIGN Quasi-experimental, pre-post design. METHODS The program included formulary changes, quantity limits, and mandatory pill splitting for select drugs implemented in phases. We assessed the short-term effects of ea...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the long-term drug costs associated with treating AIDS in developing countries. Brazil's AIDS treatment program has been cited widely as the developing world's largest and most successful AIDS treatment program. The program guarantees free access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for all people living with HIV/AIDS in need of treatment. Brazil prod...

Using Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX) claims files for 1999 and 2001, the authors describe patterns of prescription drug use and expenditures among dually eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries for all Medicaid full dually eligible beneficiaries and three important subgroups: (1) aged, (2) disabled, and (3) full-year nursing home residents. The analyses indicate great variation in use and...

The chronic nature of many prescription drugs used by Medicare beneficiaries suggests that adverse selection could pose a problem in the market for stand-alone prescription drug plans that were created under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Using panel data on the Medicare population from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we find that prescription drug expenditures are less concentra...

OBJECTIVE Children in the child welfare system are the most expensive child population to insure for their mental health needs. The objective of this article is to estimate the amount of Medicaid expenditures incurred from the purchase of psychotropic drugs - the primary drivers of mental health expenditures - for these children. METHODS We linked a subsample of children interviewed in the fi...

Our study compares expenditures for Medicare covered medical services among enrollees in three State pharmacy assistance programs with spending among low-income residents eligible or near-eligible for, but not enrolled in such State-sponsored programs after controlling for between-group differences in demographic, socioeconomic, health status, and insurance status characteristics. We estimate a...