ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE Assessing Medication Adherence and Healthcare Utilization and Cost Patterns Among Hospital-Discharged Patients with Schizoaffective Disorder

The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Background Hospital-discharged patients with schizoaf-fective disorder have a high risk of re-hospitalization. However, limited data exist evaluating critical post-dis-charge periods during which the risk of re-hospitalization is significant. Objective Among hospital-discharged patients with schizoaffective disorder, we assessed pharmacotherapy adherence and healthcare utilization and costs during sequential 60-day clinical periods before schizoaffective disorder-related hospitalization and post-hospital discharge. Methods From the MarketScan Medicaid database (2004–2008), we identified patients (C18 years) with a schizoaffective disorder-related inpatient admission. Study measures including medication adherence and healthcare utilization and costs were assessed during sequential pre-admission and post-discharge periods. We conducted uni-variate and multivariable regression analyses to compare schizoaffective disorder-related and all-cause healthcare utilization and costs (in 2010 US dollars) between each adjacent 60-day post-discharge periods. No adjustment was made for multiplicity. Results We identified 1,193 hospital-discharged patients with a mean age of 41 years. The mean medication adher-ence rate was 46 % during the 60-day period prior to index inpatient admission, which improved to 80 % during the 60-day post-discharge period. Following hospital discharge, schizoaffective disorder-related healthcare costs were sig-nificantly greater during the initial 60-day period compared with the 61- to 120-day post-discharge period (mea