Assessing real-world effectiveness of therapies : what is the impact of incretin-based treatments on hospital use for patients with type 2 diabetes?

Background Managing type 2 diabetes represents a major public health concern due to its important and increasing prevalence. Our study investigates the impact of taking incretin-based medication on the risk of being hospitalized and the length of hospital stay for individuals with type 2 diabetes. Method We use claim panel data from 2011 to 2015 and provide difference-in-differences (DID) estimations combined with matching techniques to better ensure the treatment and control groups' comparability. Our propensity score selects individuals according to their probability of taking an incretin-based treatment in 2013 (N=2,116). The treatment group includes individuals benefiting from incretin-based treatments from 2013 to 2015 and is compared to individuals not benefiting from such a treatment but having a similar probability of taking it. Results After controlling for health-related and socio-economic variables, we show that benefiting from an incretinbased treatment does not significantly impact the probability of being hospitalized but does significantly decrease the annual number of days spent in the hospital by a factor rate of 0.621 compared with the length of hospital stays for patients not benefiting from such a treatment. Conclusion These findings highlight the potential implications for our health care system in case of widespread use of these drugs among patients with severe diabetes