Negative Impact of Prior Authorization on Patients with Cancer

Dr. Shannon Westin and her guest, Dr. Michael Anne Kyle and Dr. Nancy L. Keating, discuss the paper "Prior Authorization and Association With Delayed or Discontinued Prescription Fills" recently published in the JCO.

TRANSCRIPT

The guest on this podcast episode has no disclosures to declare. 

Shannon Westin: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of JCO After Hours, the podcast that goes in depth on articles and manuscripts published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I am your host, Shannon Westin, GYN Oncologist and Social Media Editor for the Journal of Clinical Oncology. And as always, I'm so excited that you've joined us, and none of the authors have any conflict of interest today. We are going to be discussing a very exciting piece of work, “Prior Authorization and Association with Delayed or Discontinued Prescription Fills,” recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. And I'm thrilled to be joined by the two authors of this important work. The first is Michael Anne Kyle. She's a PhD research fellow in the Department of Healthcare Policy at Harvard Medical School. 

Welcome, Michael Anne. 

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Shannon Westin: We're so excited. And the second is Dr. Nancy Keating. She's Professor of Healthcare Policy at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.  

Welcome.

Dr. Nancy Keating: Thank you. It's great to be here. 

Shannon Westin: So, we'll get right to it. First, I always like to level set because we have such an interesting and diverse audience. Can one of you describe the process and goals of prior authorization? What does this mean for our groups that maybe haven't experienced this? Lucky them. 

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: Prior authorization is- the process can take many forms. Basically, what we're describing is before you can be prescribed a treatment, in this case, we're looking at medications, you have to submit a request to the payer, to the insurance company, asking for approval to receive that treatment, or in this case, that drug. The doctor's office does have to do a ton of work, but very often, the patient also receives a lot of the communication. So, there's a lot of work for everybody in prior auth often. And the uses of it- in principle, the purpose of prior authorization is to confirm that the reason this medication or this treatment is being prescribed is because the patient meets the criteria for need. So that can mean, you want to confirm that you have the right tumor markers for the drug that's being prescribed. You want to confirm that you are aligned with guidelines. And then I think the thing that's often on many people's minds is that in the US, we don't have a lot of controls on drug pricing, but drug prices are very high. And so, I think we often think about prior auth as being a mechanism to try and contain costs. 

Shannon Westin: And this isn't new, right? So, this is a process that's been going on for a while. I'd love to hear you speak a little bit about, maybe, some of the changes, like how have the requirements for prior authorization been changing over time, especially for patients with cancer?

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: That's a great question. And that was the first step we took in this work because we've heard from oncologists, from patients, from researchers, that prior auth has been increasing. And we did find, looking at Medicare data, that that is true, that the use of prior authorizations for oral oncology drugs, so that will be Part D outpatient drugs you get at the pharmacy, has been rising over the past decade. And I think what's really interesting to point out here is we found the use of prior authorization increasing both for branded drugs and for generic drugs, and for specialty drugs, which are high cost, as well as non-specialty drugs, which are typically lower cost. So, across the board, prior auth is increasing. And why is this happening really is the million-dollar question. Some of it is surely like we have accelerated approvals happening predominantly in oncology. So, you could imagine that you do need to verify some evidence of these newer treatments, but some of it is a little bit harder to interpret. And that was one of the things in our paper that we were very interested in because we also see a lot of prior auth on drugs that have a very well-established record of efficacy. And we know our first-line therapies often now include some generics, and yet we still see that they have prior auth. And the reason for that is less clear.

Shannon Westin: Yeah. Just as a gynecologic oncologist, coming from this standpoint of PARP inhibitors, which have long been established as a standard of care and for years now have been a frontline treatment, we're getting so much pushback around that, and it's a huge issue because that impact of delays and things, and I know that's your work. So, I think that's one of the reasons I was very enthusiastic about this because I think it has such broad-based impact across all of our patient populations.  

So, I think that kind of definitely transitions into this. What are the potential negative impacts in this process of patients? And I would say not only patients with cancer, but what do we know also in patients with other disease types that are facing this prior authorization issue as well?

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: What we were curious about is there's a sense that prior auth is increasing, the trends show it's increasing. And we were wondering, does that matter for patient care? And we could think about the benefits of prior authorization being like double-checking that you're getting the right treatment. But the negatives are that you can be delayed in getting treatment, and that can either be because you're going through the initial process or there can be some error or denial or dispute in a prior auth process that delays your access. And the clinical implications of that would vary by drug, how that would affect your treatment. In this case, in this paper, we're talking about drugs, but for any treatment, the implications would depend on what the treatment is and what the patient's condition is. But I really want to draw attention to this other piece, which is that it's stressful not to have your cancer medicine. And so even if you ultimately end up getting it, the time that you're on the phone trying to figure it out is time taking you away from other things. It's stressful. And very often, patients with cancer are taking multiple drugs and have complex health issues. So, they may be dealing with this for multiple parts of their care. And that can add up.

Shannon Westin: Perfect. Thank you. So, I guess next is to talk about how you address this. Let's talk a little bit about the overall objectives of the study that you just published and maybe briefly kind of go through the design for our listeners.

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: What we were interested in doing, like I said, was trying to figure out what happens with prior authorization at the point of care. And our study looks at 11 oral anticancer drugs in Medicare Part D. And the reason for that is because data available to look at prior auth is fairly limited. And Medicare Part D for the outpatient formularies does have indicators for whether a drug has a prior auth. So, we were able to use that. The next piece is we're not inside the office understanding why these treatment decisions were made. So, what we decided to do was say, “Okay, let's look at patients who've been consistently taking this drug.” And we said, “Okay, let's say you've had to have at least three fills in the past four months.” And we sort of take that as an indicator that you're able to access this drug and it seems to be working for you. And then what we do is we look at who are patients in plans, same drug, same plan, where the plan introduced a new prior auth on this drug they're taking, as compared with patients in plans who did not have a change in their prior auth policy. And we said, “Okay, there's this new prior authorization introduced, does that affect whether you get that next fill or how long it takes to get it?”

Dr. Nancy Keating: I want to emphasize Michael Anne's point about these are patients who are already successfully filling and regularly taking their drugs. And unfortunately, due to data limitations and the inability to see prescriptions that aren't filled, we would love to look at the same question with people that are starting on a new drug but weren't able to do so but would imagine that you might even see bigger impacts in those patients. We both recognize from a health policy standpoint that there could be benefits of prior authorization policies. But it's also very unlikely to think that for a patient that's regularly filling an anticancer drug over a long period of time, that there's a reason that that patient should not be on that drug. And so, this is an area where we think that there may be really limited benefits of prior authorization, but potential harms. 

Shannon Westin: Yeah, it makes sense. And of course, it would be. There's always the ideal way to set research up, and then a practical way. So, I was struck by what you chose. I thought it was really very practical and rational and made a lot of sense. And certainly, there are inferences that we can make based on what you found. So, let's talk about that. Let's talk about your primary findings. What did you see as the impact of a new prior authorization policy on patient care?

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: We found that for the patients who had a new prior auth policy introduced in their plan, compared to patients who didn't have a prior auth change, their odds of discontinuation within the next 120 days increased by about 7.1 times higher odds of discontinuation. And then for delays, we found that people were delayed an average of 9.7 days from when we last saw that they were expected to run out of their drugs based on their last fill, we said, “Okay, what's the last day we expect you to have meds on hand, and then when do we actually see you fill again if we see you fill? And the average delay there was 9.7, about 10 days. And that's a fairly conservative estimate that we decided to make. And I'm sure you and Dr. Nancy Keating can elaborate on how that's not just passive time. There's a lot of people scrambling around, probably in that interval, trying to close the gap.

Shannon Westin: I mean, you said it, like, 10 days. It's a huge time. And it's not just time sitting there twiddling your thumbs. They're probably stressing, anxious. They might be having side effects related to stopping their medication. They might be taking other medications and reduce the efficacy of the combination. I mean, there's so many implications here of the impact.

Dr. Nancy Keating: They're also calling the office, trying to get through to the office. Then the doctors are calling, trying to get through. People are like, what's going on here? Why isn't this medicine there? And so, there's a lot of individual patient and clinician effort that's happening at this time as well.

Shannon Westin: And I think, of course, you were limited by the databases that you were using and what you're able to access, but I think it really does make me wonder, what's the impact on cancer related outcomes. We know about delays in certain therapies and things and how that can negatively impact survival and response and all of those types of things. And I wish we did have access to that kind of data because obviously the time and the things that you've been able to demonstrate are important, but the more objective data we can get around patient outcomes, I think will help us impact the actual policies that are being implemented here. 

Dr. Nancy Keating: Right. And just to underscore too, Michael Anne highlighted the delays, but also there was a substantial increase in discontinuation within 120 days. So, there are some people that seem to not be able to get the med, maybe found another way to get it, or maybe were able to get samples from a drug company that we couldn't observe, but that's also concerning that there might be some people who fell through the cracks.

 

Shannon Westin: A very good point. I think that it's hard to know, but the potential there of losing the drug that's actually working for you is really distressing for providers and patients both.

 

One other thing I noticed that was interesting. Can you speak a little bit about some of the other factors that were associated with these findings with the treatment delays and what other things may be impacting these outcomes?

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: We looked at some patient characteristics and insurance characteristics that may be associated with delays. And I just have to note here that our sample is fairly small because prior authorization is so prevalent. There aren't a lot of switchers. So, this sort of limited the amount of depth we could go into. But here's what we can tell you, which is that people who are under 65, so in Medicare that will typically be people who have eligibility through disability, were filling about a day later than that 9.7 average people, female sex also filling 0.7 days, nearly a full day later. Similarly, and this is compared to males and then compared to white, non-Hispanic patients, patients who are black and patients who are Hispanic Latino are filling about 0.6, 0.7 days later, which is, of course, quite concerning, given our desire to have a more equitable health care system. And then finally, we linked our data to census data. And for patients living in a residential zip code with higher rates of poverty, we found that for each 10-percentage point increase in proportion of residents in that zip below the federal poverty level, the delay was about 2.5 days. So, what you can sort of take from that is the risk factors in particular are in Medicare being younger, which I would say is having a disability, female sex, non-white, and people living in high poverty zip codes. And given what we know about racial segregation, I think the odds are likely that the patients themselves would potentially also be low income.

Shannon Westin: That's what's so important about this work, is it raises an awareness of, really, who's being impacted by this. Because I just want to draw back to kind of what you said at the beginning, that this is meant to do cost containment. It's meant to help the healthcare system. But what we're seeing in practice is it may be helping in some specific areas, but it's certainly creating quite a detriment. So perhaps there are other mechanisms that we could be exploring from a policy standpoint to try to work on cost containment, but not put the burden on the patients or on the people that are giving this health care. So, I think that's why I was so struck by this work. 

I guess the next question is, what are your next steps for the research, and how can we use these data to help the patients?  

Dr. Michael Anne Kyle: What a great question. I'll start, and then I'll let Nancy give her thoughts too. We're lucky that prior authorization is a very active policy area right now, both at the state and federal level. There's a great deal of interest in sort of certainly improving a lot of the information systems. Perhaps we can move away from the fax machine finally in 2023. I think there's a lot of policy relevant action happening around trying to make prior authorizations electronic, and you can automate them and make a lot of this move faster. There are also larger questions about what is the right price for a drug and how do we distribute it to people that I think are a lot more fundamental than any one study, but I think this is just another way. When we think about financial toxicity, there's just many challenges that come back to some way to this root cause of care is very expensive, and this is, I think, prior auth is one of the side effects of that. 

And so, hopefully, to help patients, we can get this data in the hands of policymakers who are trying to bring us to a more modern prior auth system. And hopefully also to payers, I would be very excited to see a little bit more examination of, like when is prior auth appropriate versus when is it not. I think there are cases where prior authorization is very appropriate, and we shouldn't take it away. But one of the drugs in our study is generic imatinib, and perhaps that is a lower value prior auth. And so, I'd be very interested in seeing payers think more strategically about when is prior appropriate, both to improve access and improve equity, and then also to improve the provider burnout and the poor docs who are really struggling under the weight of this.

Dr. Nancy Keating: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with everything that Michael Anne said, but really, we'll underscore that last point. The prior auth policy seems like it's this very broad policy and the way that it's implemented, it's sort of like, let's just hit everything and not take a nuanced, thoughtful approach. But just like Michael Anne said, generic imatinib, really? And then back to this point of patients that are doing well on a drug, people are not going to be taking anti-cancer therapies if they don't need to. And so there just doesn't seem to be any reason to implement a prior authorization policy on a drug that is being well tolerated. And so really, I think there could be a lot more thought and nuance put into applying these policies within health plans.

Shannon Westin: Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to end this. I would just add, I think this is beyond anticancer therapy for our patients with cancer. I mean, we're seeing it now with supportive care medications. And to your point, I mean, generic antiemetics, and you're like, come on, this is ridiculous. So, I think that this type of work is- the best type of work always spurs more questions and gets us fired up about what to do next. So, I just want to again commend you on all of this important work, and we need to add more data here so that policy will change.

And so, thank you both for your hard work in this area and for taking the time to educate our listeners. I'm sure we're going to hear a lot of intriguing questions for you about this work, and hopefully that'll move our policy forward.  

And thank you, listeners, for checking in again with JCO After Hours. Again, we were discussing prior authorization in association with delayed or discontinued prescription fills. I'm so grateful to Dr. Kyle and Dr. Keating for joining me today, and I hope you all will listen to our other podcast offerings wherever you get your podcasts. Have an awesome day. 

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