Elena Christofides, MD, explains how acquired HO patients will inevitably experience some weight gain – but there’s an enormous difference between gaining 30 pounds vs 100 pounds.
Transcript
Insurance barriers are really difficult, particularly as we’ve seen payers start to have more and more plan exclusions for weight anti-obesity medications. And if they have a plan exclusion, those are really, really difficult to get around.
So, what we’re hoping for in the future is more medications that are directly indicated for treatment of HO, because that will help us with not hitting these general anti-obesity medication exclusions. Otherwise, a lot of our patients are able to get access to medications if they have other comorbidities.
So, things like diabetes or sleep apnea can be a way to get access to medications without having to hit that obesity plan exclusion. We use a lot of medications that may have an appetite-suppressing side effect as an extra benefit. So, if someone has issues with executive dysfunction or ADHD, using medications for those disorders that may have some appetite suppression can be helpful.
Like I said, if you’ve got diabetes or even prediabetes, trying to pick medications for those disorders that may have a weight loss benefit. But until we have medications directly indicated for HO, payer coverage will probably continue to be difficult.