In a poster presentation entitled, “Using Real-World Data to Better Understand Biosimilar Adoption Variation Across Healthcare Provider Specialties,” presented at the recent National Association of Specialty Pharmacy 2024 Annual Meeting & Expo, researchers conducted a study to assess if the provider’s specialty influences adoption of biosimilars, which is defined as adoption probability difference (APD).

The authors wrote, “The US biologics market has significantly expanded, projected to reach $62 billion in prescription drug spend by 2025. Biosimilar approvals have outpaced healthcare provider (HCP) adoption with goals to increase competition, reduce cost, and improve access, highlighting needed focus for HCP awareness and real-world data explaining variation.”

The researchers employed information from PurpleLab’s HealthNexus (Wayne, Pennsylvania) report and data analytics to evaluate the impact of healthcare provider (HCP) specialty on biosimilar adoption.

The dataset comprised 278,477 HCPs and 2,980,581 patients from U.S. commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare outpatient facilities, and professional and pharmacy claims.

The study included data from both reference and biosimilars, including adalimumab, infliximab, rituximab, and trastuzumab, and reporting periods varied for each reference biologic and biosimilar cohort to account for time on the market and launch dates.

To assess the data, researchers used R (4.4.0) to create HCP relationships that account for real-world provider practice and also employed a Random Forest model to predict the difference of HCP specialty biosimilar APD.

The authors noted that high adoption was defined “as APD of greater than 20% in HCP specialty pairwise comparison for the biosimilar.”

The researchers analyzed patient distribution by HCP specialty and subspecialty using NPI specialty taxonomy for each cohort with pairwise provider comparisons. Data revealed that new biosimilar launches had fewer providers and lesser adoption rates.

The results also revealed that biosimilar APD was greater for specialty and nonspecialty medical HCPs compared with specialty advanced practice providers (APPs), especially in rheumatology, gastroenterology, and dermatology with adalimumab and infliximab.

A comparable trend was observed with rituximab and trastuzumab for medical and APP providers, though rituximab had a lower biosimilar APD in neurology, suggesting a higher usage of the reference biologic.

Based on their findings, the authors concluded that prescribing trends for biosimilars varied by specialty, as indicated by APD, and other factors identified included new launches, the need for switching studies, minimal savings, and coverage restrictions. The authors added that survey data demonstrates that providers are not in favor of interchangeability without intervention.

“These insights are important for provider organizations to develop strategies that focus on HCP awareness and enable pharma companies to identify provider specialty shifting and biosimilar adoption,” the authors concluded.

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