Here are five things to know about the therapy:
1. Dropless therapy doesn’t required patients to self-administer expensive eye drops for multiple times per day over an extended postsurgical period. As a result, insurance co-payments are reduced for cataract surgery patients.
2. The therapy could save Medicare and Medicaid $7.1 billion over the next 10 years. State governments could save $124 million in Medicare payments in the next decade as well.
3. Patients could save $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs for pharmaceutical co-payments.
4. Surgeons administer FDA-approved drugs used in the drop therapy immediately following surgery so patients don’t have to administer the multi-drop regimen after surgery.
5. The dropless therapy is about 70 percent lower cost than drop therapy, but Medicare doesn’t currently reimburse for the dropless therapy.
“The study clearly illustrates that the wider availability of dropless therapy would benefit not only cataract patients but also our national healthcare system,” said CSIE Executive Board Member Eric Donnefeld, MD. “A change in policy to allow patient choice, either through Medicare reimbursement or at least the patients’ right to pay, would save the federal government billions. This is one of the most easy-to-read prescriptions the American public will ever see.”
Medicare is expected to fund 38 million cataract surgeries over the next decade, with current therapy costing Medicare $323 per eye on average.
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