Cost-effective medical therapy of hepatitis C employing novel compensation models - pay for cure

Abstract

Direct acting antivirals (DAAs) have increased cure rates for chronic hepatitis C infection up to nearly 100 %. At the same time treatment costs have risen significantly. Treating all HCV infected patients in Germany with DAAs would generate medication costs ranging between 19 and 37 billion EUR depending on the drug regimen used. Expenses in patients who fail to respond to treatment would amount to approximately 0.9 to 2.15 billion EUR. In difficult to treat patient populations that are characterized by prior failure to treatment or advanced liver disease, lost drug expenses are particularly high due to lower cure rates and longer treatment duration. Outcome-based reimbursement schemes are used to improve the quality of care and to reduce costs in the health care system. In Germany, disease management programs have been implemented for defined chronic diseases. However, drug reimbursement is still based on packages sold (pay for pill). In this context, it would be appealing to link reimbursement and treatment success (pay for cure) in order to reward successful treatment, limit lost drug spending and develop a shared risk environment that would involve all concerned parties. Under the assumption that 20,000 patients with HCV are treated each year in Germany and that cure rates are 95.4 %, the saved treatment costs would amount up to 45 and 107 million EUR per year. By this approach, economic incentives to withhold therapy from difficult to treat patients could be avoided.