The study was conducted to understand how key determinants of the Patient Financial Eligibility Tool (PFET), a previously validated tool for assessing patients' ability to contribute to their medication costs, vary across countries. A clustering analysis was conducted on economic data from 1404 patients from Thailand (n = 947), the UAE (n = 347) and Mexico (n = 110). The analysis identified seven patient clusters, including globally wealthy or poor patients (14%/48%) and those with only selectively increased PFET economic indicators (38%), and revealed country-specific differences in the correlation between PFET metrics and patients' overall economic status. The PFET is a versatile tool that can be adapted to each country's economic context to assess patients' ability to contribute to their medication costs.
Ability to pay for medication: a clustering analysis of 1404 patients with the Patient Financial Eligibility Tool.
J Comp Eff Res. 2019;8(12):969-977.
MeSH terms: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Cluster Analysis; Consumer Behavior; Fees, Pharmaceutical; Female; Financing, Personal; Humans; Income; Mexico; Middle Aged; Prescription Drugs; Socioeconomic Factors; Thailand
DOI: 10.2217/cer-2019-0063