Burden of treatment-resistant depression in Medicare: A retrospective claims database analysis.

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have assessed the incremental economic burden of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) versus non-treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (i.e., non-TRD MDD) in commercially-insured and Medicaid-insured patients, but none have focused on Medicare-insured patients.

OBJECTIVE

To assess healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and costs of patients with TRD versus non-TRD MDD or without major depressive disorder (MDD; i.e., non-MDD) in a Medicare-insured population.

METHODS

Adult patients were retrospectively identified from the Chronic Condition Warehouse de-identified 100% Medicare database (01/2010-12/2016). MDD was defined as ≥1 MDD diagnosis and ≥1 claim for an antidepressant. Patients initiated on a third antidepressant following two antidepressant treatment regimens of adequate dose and duration were considered to have TRD. The index date was defined as the date of the first antidepressant claim for the TRD and non-TRD MDD cohorts, and as a randomly imputed date for the non-MDD cohort. Patients with TRD were matched 1:1 to non-TRD MDD patients and randomly selected non-MDD patients based on propensity scores. Analyses were also performed for a subset of patients aged ≥65.

RESULTS

Of 29,543 patients with MDD, 3,225 (10.9%) met the study definition of TRD; 157,611 were included in the non-MDD cohort. Matched patients with TRD and non-TRD MDD were, on average, 58.9 and 59.0 years old, respectively. The TRD cohort had higher per-patient-per-year (PPPY) HRU than the non-TRD MDD (e.g., inpatient visits: incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.36) and non-MDD cohorts (e.g., inpatient visits: IRR = 1.84, all P<0.001). The TRD cohort had significantly higher total PPPY healthcare costs than the non-TRD MDD cohort ($25,517 vs. $20,425, adjusted cost difference = $3,385) and non-MDD cohort ($25,517 vs. $14,542, adjusted cost difference = $4,015, all P<0.001). Similar results were found for the subset of patients ≥65.

CONCLUSION

Among Medicare-insured patients, those with TRD had higher HRU and costs compared to those with non-TRD MDD and non-MDD.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

DP, MLZ, PZ, PL, and PEG are employees of Analysis Group, Inc., which provided paid consultancy services to Janssen Scientific Affairs, LLC. to conduct the present study. KJ and JJS are employees of Janssen Scientific Affairs, LLC. and may own stocks or stock options. The funder was involved in all aspects of the research, including the design of the study, data collection and analysis, preparation of the manuscript, and the decision to publish. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. Restrictions apply to the availability of data underlying this manuscript. Specifically, the data were purchased from ResDAC/CMS and can only be accessed by contacting the data provider.