Clinical Outcomes Of Patients Within The Rheumatoid Arthritis Care Pathway Cohort At a Tertiary Care Integrated Delivery Network: A Comparison To Usual Care.

Objective: We aimed to compare clinical outcomes between patients in the Allegheny Health Network rheumatoid arthritis (RA) care pathway and patients receiving usual care.

Methods: The care pathway initiative implements guideline-based best practice alongside multi-disciplinary team-based care. Clinical and insurance claims data were extracted to compare the proportion of patients in clinical disease activity index (CDAI)-based remission and evaluate health care utilization and per member per month (PMPM) costs of care.

Results: The RA care pathway cohort included 817 patients, and the usual care cohort included 3651 patients. The care pathway cohort had a significantly higher proportion of patients achieving remission at 6, 12, and 24 months (33.5% vs 20.3%, hazard ratio 1.53, 95% confidence interval 1.11-2.10, p = 0.008 at 24 months), and on average, 64 days earlier than usual care. This trend was also observed when including low disease activity patients with patients in remission and in a subgroup analysis of newly-diagnosed RA. RA-related PMPM costs were significantly higher in the care pathway group and primarily related to higher baseline CDAI, comorbidities, and biologic/targeted synthetic disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug use and switching.

Conclusion: Patients in our RA care pathway were more likely to achieve remission than usual care. PMPM RA costs were higher compared to usual care. We plan to use a longer follow-up to investigate if improved clinical outcomes result in reduced direct and indirect costs, to study the impact of individual team-based care interventions, and to validate our findings in other populations.