Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 28, 2015; 21(32): 9588-9597
Published online Aug 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i32.9588
Impact of partial reimbursement on hepatitis B antiviral utilization and adherence
Qian Qiu, Xiao-Wan Duan, Yan Li, Li-Kun Yang, Yu Chen, Hui Li, Zhong-Ping Duan, Li Wang
Qian Qiu, Hui Li, Li Wang, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, School of Basic Medicine Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100005, China
Xiao-Wan Duan, Yan Li, Li-Kun Yang, Yu Chen, Zhong-Ping Duan, Liver Center, Beijing You’an Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing 100069, China
Author contributions: Qiu Q and Duan XW contributed equally to this work; Wang L, Duan ZP and Li H designed the study; Qiu Q completed the data analysis and drafted the manuscript; Duan XW conducted the questionnaire survey; Li Y, Yang LK and Chen Y retrieved the electronic data; all authors reviewed the manuscript.
Supported by Foundation of Ministry of Science and Technology of China, No. 2012ZX10004904 and No. 2013ZX10002002006002; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, No. AI463-961; and Innovative Foundation of Beijing Union Medical College.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was approved by the Ethical Review Committee of Beijing You’an Hospital of Capital Medical University and Institute of Basic Medical Sciences Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
Informed consent statement: Given that the study poses no more than the minimal risk, and it would not be practicable to contact all the 30451 CHB patients in the two cohorts, a waiver of the informed consent was allowed by the Ethical Review Committee for the first part of study, involving secondary analysis of data of the two cohorts for a total of 30451 CHB patients. But for the validation study part, written or oral informed consent was obtained from the participants dependent on questionnaire survey by face-to-face interview or telephone interview. Deidentification was done to assure confidentiality of the study data for the two parts.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None declared.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix and output files of the statistical analysis available from the corresponding author at liwang@ibms.pumc.edu.cn.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Li Wang, PhD, Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, School of Basic Medicine Peking Union Medical College, 5 Dong Dan San Tiao, Beijing 100005, China. liwang@ibms.pumc.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-10-65288170 Fax: +86-10-69156971
Received: March 12, 2015
Peer-review started: March 14, 2015
First decision: April 13, 2015
Revised: April 28, 2015
Accepted: June 15, 2015
Article in press: June 16, 2015
Published online: August 28, 2015
Processing time: 168 Days and 21.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: High adherence is the key to ensuring the effectiveness of antiviral therapy and adherence can be influenced by cost and affordability which can be strongly influenced by reimbursement scheme. This study uniquely analyzed the impact of medication reimbursement on hepatitis B antiviral usage as well as treatment adherence in Beijing, China, where chronic hepatitis B infection is endemic. The results showed a positive impact of partial reimbursement on antiviral utilization as well as adherence for insured chronic hepatitis B patients. The results of this study could address a more global overall question rather than something at the patient level.