Ep. Armstrong et J. Abarca, An examination of the relationship between non-depression-related costs and uninterrupted Tx, FORMULARY, 36(6), 2001, pp. 461
Depression is an important disease for many managed care organizations and
can be one of the largest cost drivers in their drug budget. A number of st
udies have focused on the cost impact of antidepressant treatment. One prev
iously published study showed that significant savings in office-based serv
ice costs was likely in patients who completed at least 6 months of antidep
ressant therapy. The purpose of this study was to determine if these result
s could be replicated in another managed care population. The methodology f
rom the previously published study was adopted as a framework for this anal
ysis. No analyses in the cur rent study demonstrated that uninterrupted ant
idepressant treatment was associated with a large reduction in non-depressi
on-related costs.