Long‐term care is getting more attention these days due to its impact on the growth of overall healthcare cost. With the implementation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, the incentives and payment dynamics have changed the long‐term care market. This paper seeks to focus on the pharmaceutical market in the long‐term care space and to identify a few characteristics for the stakeholders' strategies.
The study used the IMS data sets, complemented by the information and statistics available in the literature to isolate the long‐term care market with regard to pharmaceutical products, its characteristics and dynamics.
The analysis showed that the market for pharmaceutical products in the long‐term‐care space is characterized by a couple of therapeutic classes, concentrated in a rather few geographical area in the USA. The traditional institutional based care is declining but the home health care use is increasing.
Access to the IMS data makes the findings of the study unique. Given the government sponsored prescription drug plan for the elderly is expanding, it will be of significant value to document the impact of the Part D plan on the overall healthcare cost in a dynamic long‐term care market.
