United States – A new study suggests that a minor change to the size of available vials of the new Alzheimer’s breakthrough drug, Leqembi, could save Medicare up to $280 million annually.
Currently, roughly 6% of Leqembi (lecanemab) is wasted since patients are often administered doses below the volume that a vial of the drug can hold, as reported by HealthDay.
Losses Add Up
From this waste, Medicare is said to lose roughly $1,600 per patient annually, according to researchers in a study done by JAMA Internal Medicine published on October 14.
Offering a 75-milligram vial in addition to the two currently available doses of 200 milligrams and 500 milligrams can help Medicare reclaim as much as $336 million a year, up to 74% of the wasted Leqembi.
Patients with Medicare can use Leqembi if they have MCI or mild Alzheimer’s with their doctor’s permission to continue collecting data on the drug’s performance.
The Cost of Leqembi to Medicare
Earlier estimates have postulated that the annual Leqembi treatment could cost Medicare as much as $2 billion to $5 billion, depending on the eligible population.
Leqembi is dosed according to the patient’s weight. In this analysis, investigators approximated the number of Medicare patients capable of receiving Leqembi and then determined the number of each person’s estimated dose.
The conclusions that can be drawn from the outcomes of the experiment include: The present work also indicated that much of the drug is wasted so that an individual’s suggested dose can conform to the vial sizes for doctors.
Wasted Doses, Lost Dollars
Researchers said, for instance, a patient of 165 pounds would be expected to make do with 650 milligrams.
Doctors would use that amount, which they would have extracted from one 500 mg and one 200 mg vial, while the rest of the 50 mg of the drug would have to be discarded, said the researchers.
In other words, an estimated $133 million to $336 million worth of Leqembi is being flushed ‘down the drain’ annually, researchers said.
Overall, all the unused Leqembi from the 16 patients could have treated another patient, studies showed.
A Solution That Saves Without Compromising Care
The team elaborated that increasing a dose by a third 75-milligram vial would cut that waste by 74% without forcing an alteration to quality of care or drug pricing.
Such an analysis could be useful for a host of other drugs included in Medicare’s list of reimbursable products, as indicated by the researchers, as reported by HealthDay.
Broader Implications
“There are significant opportunities for savings even with this single drug, implying that even greater savings could be achieved if our proposed solutions were applied to other infused therapies,” Zhou said in a UCLA news release.