Bone Abstracts

Objectives: This study aims to evaluate and compare the preferences of patients and health care professionals for osteoporotic drug treatment.

Materials and methods: A discrete choice experiment was conducted among patients and health care professionals (general physicians, rheumatologists, and geriatricians) in Belgium. Participants were asked to choose between two hypothetical unlabelled drug treatments (and an opt-out option) that vary in several attributes: efficacy in reducing the risk of fracture, type of potential common side-effects, mode and frequency of administration and out-of-pocket costs. Patients completed the questionnaire from their own perspective and professionals were presented with a specific patient profile corresponding to the average patient that completed the experiment. An efficient design was used to construct the treatment option choice sets and a mixed logit model was used to estimate patients’ preferences.

Results: A total of 257 patients and 59 professionals completed the experiment. Both patients and professionals preferred a drug treatment with a higher risk reduction and a lower cost. They disliked more being at risk of gastro-intestinal disorders than at risk of skin reactions and preferred 6-month s.c. injection and monthly oral tablets compared with weekly oral tablets. Some differences between patients and professionals were significant. Health care professionals attached higher value for treatment efficacy and treatment costs, and the preference for yearly i.v. was higher (and significant compared with weekly oral tablet) for professionals. Patients also disliked more a treatment with a risk of having skin reactions. The constant (representing the preferences for drug treatment compared with no treatment) was also higher for the patients.

Conclusions: Although there were similarities in the preferences of patients and health care professionals for osteoporosis drug medications, differences for levels of some attributes were observed that should not be ignored when aiming to adjust treatment to the preferences of patients.