Evaluating the Impact of State Level Masking Policies on Adherence over Time in Diabetic and Hypertensive Populations

OBJECTIVES: When the COVID-19 pandemic began, states in the U.S. responded with a variety of preventive policies, from physical distancing and mask requirements to expansions of social safety net program and restaurant closures. This research aims to explore the impact of masking policies on prescribing and medicine adherence behavior among diabetic and hypertensive populations across the US, both during the masking period and after.

METHODS: Patient periods are starting 3/1/2019 and running 365 days for 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23. Each patient with a fill in the oral diabetes category was examined for these time periods and a count of oral diabetes fills was performed on each time period. Patients were only included in the analysis of they had at least one fill in each of the time periods to show sufficient persistence in the oral diabetes category. Similar methods were used to identify hypertensive patients. Policy information on Masking was taken from the Covid US Policy (CUSP) database. Drug claims from the MedAdvisor database were used in this research. Patient adherence pre-Covid, during Covid and post Covid were compared. A logistic regression model was used to identify drivers of adherence.

RESULTS: During Covid, diabetic and hypertensive patient populations had increases in compliance of 2.7% and 2.3%, respectively. Compared to the pre-Covid baseline period, patients were likely to be more compliant during the Covid and post Covid timeframes.

CONCLUSIONS: The masking policies that were implemented did not create obstacles to negatively impact adherence in our patient population. In post pandemic measures, there is evidence of small positive impact on patient medication compliance associated with their states’ restrictive policy.