Approximately 8% of children in the United States have asthma. Each year, these children experience 4 million asthma attacks that result in 725,000 ED visits and 100,000 hospitalizations. Unsurprisingly, the direct medical expenditures of children with asthma are 75-90% higher than those of children without asthma. In 2016, this amount totaled 40 billion dollars. Substantial indirect costs are incurred when parents miss work to care for their children who miss school. These additional costs raise the total economic burden of asthma to $80 billion annually. Frequent asthma-related school absences impair academic achievement and social functioning. This burden falls disproportionately on minority, low-income, and urban populations. For example, black children have 60% more ED visits and 75% more hospitalizations than white children even though they have similar asthma attack rates.
Adherence to ICS is notoriously poor.20, 22, 23 While 86% of privately insured patients who receive an ICS prescription will refill it within 30 days, only 64% will subsequently refill it again within 180 days. Even worse, only 3% will refill enough medication to cover greater than or equal to 75% of prescribed days with average medication possession being approximately 20%. Black and Hispanic patients are 20% less likely to refill their initial prescription and are 40% less likely to refill enough medication to cover greater than or equal to 75% of prescribed days. Adherence is similarly poor among the publicly insured. Among Medicaid-insured children, ICS is only refilled enough to cover 20% of prescribed days; fewer than 15% will refill enough to cover greater than or equal to 50% of days. At any given time, 40% of children with asthma are not well-controlled and much of this is attributable to nonadherence. Simulation and modeling studies suggest that maximizing ICS adherence among those prescribed ICS could reduce health care utilization by 25-45%. Even greater reductions are hypothesized if ICS prescribing could be expanded to all patients at risk of serious asthma-related exacerbations. However, a recent Cochrane review concluded that current methods of improving adherence for chronic health problems are mostly complex and not very effective. New adherence strategies will be needed if society is to achieve the gains suggested possible by simulations. Medication non-adherence among patients with chronic disease is a multi-dimensional challenge. The cost and convenience of obtaining medication (health system factors) and the motivation needed to adhere with a daily health habit (patient-related factors) are common barriers to adherence that are addressed by this study. Medication acquisition costs deter patients from refilling and refilling prescription medications. Even small $1-3 co-payments can appreciably reduce adherence. However, imposing additional time costs by requiring more frequent refills has an even greater impact. Time costs can add $50-100 per prescription. Therefore, the $155 out-of-pocket spending estimate for children's asthma medication likely understates the true economic burden. Dispensing ICS in the ED is therefore expected to improve adherence by reducing the substantial time and travel costs associated with medication acquisition. ICS treatment also burdens patients by requiring them to adopt a daily health habit. For children, this burden primarily falls on parents. Parents weigh the perceived benefits of treatment against their perceptions of treatment risk and burden. Given that asthma symptoms fluctuate in response to treatment and season, many purposefully reduce medication administration when their child's symptoms wane (volitional non-adherence).
In the absence of treatment, the underlying inflammation is allowed to worsen and exacerbation risk increases. This reactive pattern of medication use is substantiated by the fact that 37% of all prescriptions for ICS are refilled on the same day as prescriptions for oral corticosteroid, suggesting after the exacerbation, not before it.18 Even more disturbing, less than 50% of children who refilled a prescription for oral corticosteroid were ever noted to have refilled an ICS prescription, meaning most lacked any access to controller medication.18 Our proposal addresses the problem of primary non-adherence by dispensing medication in the ED and addresses non-adherence by arranging supervised use in the school setting.
