Health plan budget impact of introducing everolimus for treatment of advanced progressive pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors in the United States.

Abstract

229 Background: Everolimus was recently approved for treatment of patients with advanced progressive pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNET) based on a clinically meaningful and statistically significant increase in progression-free survival. To understand the financial impact of introducing everolimus into the market, a model was developed to simulate a typical health plan in the United States (US). Methods: A cross-sectional budget impact model with a one-year time horizon was developed. Disease prevalence and drug usage data were derived from a real-world data source. Costs for anti-tumor therapy and underlying care included concomitant medications, physician visits, treatment infusion, surgical procedures, tests, hospitalizations, and adverse event (AE) management. Resource utilization rates were derived from a physician survey-based resource utilization study; treatment-related AE rates were taken from secondary literature. Drug costs were Wholesale Acquisition Costs (2011). Medical procedure and hospitalization costs were based on Medicare fee schedules for current procedure terminology and diagnosis-related group codes. AE costs were obtained from the literature. The model assessed the initial annual budget impact, under the assumption that everolimus and sunitinib, another recently approved targeted therapy, replace most currently available chemotherapy treatments. Results: Based on published prevalence rates, for a health plan with 1,000,000 members, an annual count of 12 advanced pNET patients was projected. The model estimated a $22,657 budget increase ($0.0019 per member per month or $0.0227 per member per year [PMPY]). The largest percent increase in budget was associated with anti-tumor treatments; infusions and surgical procedures represented the largest percent decrease in costs. Scenario analyses indicated that increasing the percentage of everolimus use (by reducing that of sunitinib) resulted in a decrease in the overall budget compared to baseline. Conclusions: Our model predicts that treating pNET patients with everolimus will have a minimal budget impact on US health plans, amounting to about $0.027 PMPY.