Person:

Wagner, Anita

Objectives: The 2004 International Conference on Improving Use of Medicines recommended that emerging and expanding health insurances in low-income countries focus on improving access to and use of medicines. In recent years, Community-based Health Insurance (CHI) schemes have multiplied, with mounting evidence of their positive effects on financial protection and resource mobilization for healthcare in poor settings. Using literature review and qualitative interviews, this paper investigates whether and how CHI expands access to medicines in low-income countries. Methods: We used three complementary data collection approaches: (1) analysis of WHO National Health Accounts (NHA) and available results from the World Health Survey (WHS); (2) review of peer-reviewed articles published since 2002 and documents posted online by national insurance programs and international organizations; (3) structured interviews of CHI managers about key issues related to medicines benefit packages in Lao PDR and Rwanda. Results: In low-income countries, only two percent of WHS respondents with voluntary insurance belong to the lowest income quintile, suggesting very low CHI penetration among the poor. Yet according to the WHS, medicines are the largest reported component of out-of-pocket payments for healthcare in these countries (median 41.7%) and this proportion is inversely associated with income quintile. Publications have mentioned over a thousand CHI schemes in 19 low-income countries, usually without in-depth description of the type, extent, or adequacy of medicines coverage. Evidence from the literature is scarce about how coverage affects medicines utilization or how schemes use cost-containment tools like co-payments and formularies. On the other hand, interviews found that medicines may represent up to 80% of CHI expenditures. Conclusion: This paper highlights the paucity of evidence about medicines coverage in CHI. Given the policy commitment to expand CHI in several countries (e.g. Rwanda, Lao PDR) and the potential of CHI to improve medicines access and use, systematic research is needed on medicine benefits and their performance, including the impacts of CHI on access to, affordability, and use of medicines at the household level.

Background: Hypertension is the number one attributable risk factor for death throughout the world and a major contributor to morbidity, mortality, and increasing health care expenditures in the Philippines. Lack of access to outpatient antihypertensive medicines leads to avoidable disease progression and costly inpatient admissions. We estimated the cost to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), which generally does not cover outpatient medicines, for inpatient care for hypertension and its sequelae. Methods: Using PhilHealth inpatient claims for discharges between July 1, 2002 and December 31, 2005, we describe costs to PhilHealth for hospitalizations classified by primary discharge diagnoses into hospitalizations for hypertension; hypertensive heart and/or renal disease; other definite; and other possible consequences of untreated hypertension and assess disease trajectory for patients with more than one admission. Results: PhilHealth reimbursed US $56 million for 444,628 hospitalizations for hypertension-related diagnoses incurred by 360,016 patients during 3.5 years; 42% of admissions were for essential or secondary hypertension; 19% for hypertensive heart or renal disease; and 39% for other consequences of untreated hypertension. Among 60,659 patients admitted during the first 18 months of the study with a diagnosis of essential or secondary hypertension, 9% were hospitalized again for treatment of sequelae; older individuals (vs. =< 40 years old), men, dependents (vs. members), and those who were employed (vs. in the private membership category) were more likely to be hospitalized again; as were those whose first admission during the study period was for consequences of hypertension (vs. essential or secondary hypertension). Conclusion: Inpatient care for hypertension and its sequelae is expensive. Since many hospitalizations may be avoided with antihypertensive pharmacologic therapy, an outpatient medicines benefit may be one cost-effective policy option for PhilHealth.

Background: Studies carried out in the community enable researchers to understand access to medicines, affordability, and barriers to use from the consumer's point of view, and may stimulate the development of adequate medicines policies. The aim of the present article was to describe methodological and analytical aspects of quantitative studies on medicine utilization carried out at the household level. Methods: Systematic review of original papers with data collected in studies in which the household was a sampling unit, published between 1995 and 2008. The electronic review was carried out in Medline/Pubmed, Scielo and Lilacs. The reference lists of the papers identified were examined, as well as other publications by their authors. Studies on the utilization of specific pharmacological groups, or those including only respondents with a given disease were excluded. Results: Out of 4852 papers initially identified in the literature search, 61 fulfilled our inclusion criteria. Most studies were carried out in Europe and North America and used a cross-sectional approach. More than 80% used face-to-face interviews for data collection, and the most frequently used recall period for assessing medicine utilization was 14–15 days. In 59% of the studies, interviewers were trained to request the packaging of the medicines reported by the subjects; medical prescriptions were requested less frequently (15% of the studies). Conclusion: These data will be useful for updating researchers on what methods their peers are currently using. Such information may help overcome challenges in the planning and analyses of future studies. Moreover, this publication may contribute to the improvement of the quality of medicine use data obtained in household surveys.