Adherence and economic impact of paliperidone palmitate versus oral atypical antipsychotics in a Medicare population

Aim: To compare adherence, healthcare utilization and costs among real world, Medicare-eligible patients with schizophrenia using long-acting injectable paliperidone palmitate (PP) versus oral atypical antipsychotics. Patients & methods: Historical cohort study used Medicare Advantage claims data. Inverse probability of treatment weighting was applied to adjust for baseline differences. 12-month adherence, healthcare utilization and costs were compared. Results: Patients using PP were more adherent (proportion of days covered ≥0.8; 48.1 vs 32.6%; p Conclusion: Compared with patients using oral atypical antipsychotics, PP had lower hospitalizations and medical costs with greater medication adherence accompanied by higher pharmacy costs.