Flexible analytics are valuable tools to inform the management of costs and outcomes for therapies such as glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs, having a significant impact on payer spending and trend. This paper summarizes central themes and provides illustrative examples from Milliman’s GLP-1 Impact Dashboard suite of analytics to facilitate the strategic management of GLP-1-related care.

Highlights

• Potential benefits of GLP-1 drugs: We note the positive effects on weight loss, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obstructive sleep apnea, and chronic kidney disease.
• Longer-term unknowns: Challenges include a slowed metabolism and a lack of adherence to dosing regimens.
• Decision-support analytics for payers: There is an increased need for thorough data analysis to understand the impact on specific populations.
• Assessing medication adherence: We give an example from Milliman’s GLP-1 Impact Dashboard of a sample cohort of non-diabetic patients with obesity.
• Measuring effects on medical costs: Using per patient per year (PPPY) data from a commercial population starting GLP-1s in 2021, adherent patients without diabetes had only 9% lower annual medical costs than non-adherent patients.
• Measuring effects on pharmaceutical cost of care: We show the total pharmaceutical spend PPPY for the same population that began GLP-1 treatment in 2021.
• Identifying opportunities: We discuss how Milliman's dashboard can facilitate longitudinal analyses of patients with chronic conditions, and offer insights into benchmarks and outcomes.