Challenges Related to Out-of-Pocket Costs in Heart Failure Management

High out-of-pocket costs and financial toxicity related to heart failure treatment are substantial concerns. Two of 4 pillars of guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, for example, carry high costs that may attenuate their uptake. Furthermore, heart failure rarely occurs in isolation. Many patients have other comorbidities that require treatment, further driving up patients’ out-of-pocket costs. Developing treatment plans that improve mortality without subjecting patients to financial toxicity can be challenging for several reasons. First, patients with heart failure can accrue out-of-pocket costs from multiple domains and can depend on a variety of insurance and pharmacy-related factors that can make determining patient-specific out-of-pocket cost estimates complicated. Second, strategies to mitigate financial toxicity involve health policy-level interventions and patient-level interventions. These have their own unique sets of challenges. Third, integrating out-of-pocket costs into shared decision-making requires nuanced and challenging discussions about whether a therapy is worth the cost. Though shared decision-making has been advocated, there are little data on how to best conduct these discussions. Health policies like the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 may provide relief to some patients, and efforts to improve transparency have the potential to be beneficial. Over the long term, policy solutions such as value-based insurance design and patient engagement solutions that emphasize enhancing shared decision-making have important potential to yield durable results.