LANSING – Michigan’s workers compensation changes aimed at reducing the prices paid for physician-dispensed prescriptions has largely been achieved, a study by the Workers Compensation Research Institute has shown, but the number of prescriptions dispensed is still more prevalent than expected.

With data covering 15 months experience following the legal changes (Michigan’s changes took effect in December 2012), WCRI found the average price per pill paid to physicians for eight of the top 10 drugs commonly dispensed by Michigan doctors decreased “considerably,” to between 15 and 68 percent between the third quarter of 2012 (pre-reform) and the first quarter of 2014 (post-reform).

As of the first quarter of 2014, WCRI said there were only a few prescriptions dispensed by physicians for much higher-priced new strengths of drugs, which were seen in some other post-reform states studied (eight states, including Michigan, were studied).

Over the same period, the prices paid to pharmacies for the same drugs changed little or even increased, the report found.

Among the other Midwest states studied by WCRI, Michigan saw similar – if not more – decreases in prices paid per pill to physicians. In Illinois, some 16 months or more after its reform, the average price per pill paid for 7 of the top 11 drugs decreased between 22 and 55 percent. And nine months after Indiana’s reform, the average price paid per pill to physicians for nine of the 10 most commonly dispensed decreased between 14 and 44 percent.

The report also found that fewer prescriptions were dispensed at physicians’ offices, but physician dispensing was till common in Michigan 15 months after the reform. In the pre-reform third quarter of 2012, 39 percent of all prescriptions were dispensed at physicians’ offices, while that same figure was 34 percent in the first quarter of 2014.

“This result is important to note because advocates for physician dispensing argued the reform that capped the prices paid for physician-dispensed drugs would make it more difficult for patients to have prescriptions filled at their physicians’ offices,” the report said. “Over this period, physicians’ cost share of prescriptions decreased from 31 percent pre-reform to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2014, a result of decreased frequency and considerable price reduction.”

Overall, physicians’ cost share decreased from 31 percent in the pre-reform third quarter of 2012 to 21 percent in the post-reform first quarter of 2014, the study determined. And Michigan was one of the few states where the cost share was lower than the prescription share for the physician-dispensed drugs (because of a considerably smaller number of pills prescribed for the drugs they dispensed).

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