Despite a 2012 law that aimed to reduce the amount of pain medication Connecticut doctors were prescribing to injured workers by limiting the prices the prescriptions could fetch, prices rose in the first quarter of 2014, according to results of a study released this week by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI).
The study found that prices for those medications fell throughout 2013, preceding the jump in early 2014, which was the most recent quarter analyzed by WCRI. The institute plans to study more recent quarters in the future.
In its recent report, the institute also examined the impact of changing laws in several other states, including Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Connecticut’s reform, which took effect in July 2012, limited the reimbursement amount for physician-dispensed repackaged drugs to the manufacturer’s average wholesale price.
WCRI noted more dispensing of higher-priced drugs in the latest quarter, which WRCI report authors wrote “raises questions about the sustainability of the reforms.”
Looking at 20 months of post-reform data, WCRI found that:
– The average price per pill paid to physicians for nine of the 10 top drugs commonly dispensed by physicians decreased 20 to 60 percent in the initial 15 months after the reform, but the price reduction was not sustained, primarily due to more frequent physician dispensing of higher-priced new strengths for the most commonly used drugs, cyclobenzaprine HCL and tramadol HCL.
– The price differentials for most other top drugs were reduced, but still sizable (physician prices were 30 to 60 percent above pharmacy prices for the same drugs).
– Fewer prescriptions were dispensed at physicians’ offices, but physician dispensing was still common 20 months after the reform. In the first quarter of 2014, physicians dispensed 32 percent of all prescriptions, down from 39 percent in the second quarter of 2012.
