Effect of a single pill concept on clinical and pharmacoeconomic outcomes in cardiovascular diseases.

Aims: Our study aimed to assess whether a single pill concept (SPC) is superior to a multi pill concept (MPC) in reducing cardiovascular (CV) events, all-cause death, and costs in CV patients.

Method and results: Anonymized medical claims data covering 2012-2018, including patients with hypertension, dyslipidemia, and CV diseases who started a drug therapy either as SPC or identical MPC were analyzed after 1:1-Propensity Score Matching (PSM). Hospitalizations with predefined CV events, all-cause mortality, and costs were studied in 25,311 patients with SPC and 25,311 patients with MPC using incidence rate ratios (IRRs) and non-parametric tests for continuous variables.IRRs were significantly lower for SPC: stroke (IRR=0.77; 95% CI 0.67-0.88; p<0.001), transitory ischemic attack (IRR=0.61; 95% CI 0.48-0.78; p<0.001), myocardial infarction (IRR=0.76; 95% CI 0.63-0.90; p=0.0016), coronary artery disease (IRR=0.66; 95% CI 0.57-0.77; p<0.001), heart failure (IRR=0.59; 95% CI 0.54-0.64; p<0.001), acute renal failure (IRR=0.54; 95% CI 0.56-0.64; p<0.001), all cause hospitalization (IRR=0.72; 95% CI 0.71-0.74; p<0.001), CV hospitalization (IRR=0.63; 95% CI 0.57-0.69; p<0.001), and all-cause mortality (IRR=0.62; 95% CI 0.57-0.68; p<0.001). Mean time to first events and time to death were also in favor of SPC. Mean total costs were 4,708 € for SPC vs. 5.669 € for MPC, respectively (MR 0.830, p<0.001).

Conclusion: SPC is associated with lower incidence rates of CV events, time to CV events, and all-cause death, and is superior regarding pharmacoeconomic parameters and should therefore become standard of care to improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.