Corporations are increasingly interested in the concept of value-based insurance design (VBID) to mitigate the consequences of rising copayments for health care services. VBID programs reduce copays or maintain low copays for “high-value” health care services, such as drugs for treatment of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.

HCP professor Michael E. Chernew and colleagues provided the first evaluation of a VBID program by examining the impact of a large employer’s VBID initiative on patients’ adherence to their prescribed treatment regimens. The researchers found that the VBID program effectively increased patients’ observance of their prescribed treatments. These results suggest that employees in the VBID program enjoyed improved health and that some of the costs of the program were offset by declining use of health care services, such as hospital admissions, associated with poor disease management.

The article was published in the January/February issue of Health Affairs. Read an article covering this study on Reuters.com.