Dr Adriaan Voors: Health Care Reimbursement May Affect SGLT2 Inhibitor Uptake

Adriaan Voors, MD, professor of cardiology and director of the Heart Failure Clinic, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, explains why patients with heart failure provided sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in hospital may be unable to continue the medication after discharge.

Transcript

How likely are patients to continue empagliflozin following hospital discharge?

That might depend on where you live. In my hospital, the uptake of SGLT2 inhibitors is strongly increasing now. But we have obviously a lot of possibilities also from the insurance companies and the health care system to provide all the patients with these drugs. I must admit that even before empagliflozin came out, there was already the tendency in a hospital to start with an SGLT2 inhibitor just before discharge.

Not that we did this routinely, but this gives real comfort that you can also start it in an earlier phase, which further increases the likelihood that it will be given. But some countries don’t have the reimbursement for SGLT2 inhibitors, even in the United States. I’ve heard from some colleagues I spoke to that SGLT2 inhibitors are not even provided yet.

So, it depends on where you live, even where in the United States or where in Europe you live, whether the reimbursement has been taken care of.