Importance: The high cost of self-injectable epinephrine autoinjectors may represent a barrier to community anaphylaxis management. Value-based pricing can provide a benchmark for rational epinephrine autoinjector costs.
Objective: To define value-based pricing of community epinephrine autoinjectors.
Design, setting, and participants: In an economic evaluation study using a cost-effectiveness birth cohort model over an extended 80-year time horizon, Markov simulations of children with peanut allergy evaluated cost ceilings for value-based epinephrine prices in peanut allergy. Simulation inputs included all-cause age-adjusted mortality (2013 US life tables), 2013 published food allergy fatality rates, 2017 rates of autoinjector device carriage, and 2016 published market costs of self-injectable epinephrine. All costs were expressed in 2018 US dollars and discounted at 3% per annum.
Exposures: Cohorts of children with peanut allergy prescribed epinephrine autoinjectors were compared with those not receiving personal epinephrine prescriptions. Children without epinephrine autoinjectors assumed 10-fold to 100-fold fatality risk increases. Costs were evaluated from a societal perspective.
Main outcomes and measures: Fatality risk, quality-adjusted life-years, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio.
Results: A total of 100 000 simulated infants with peanut allergy entered each strategy, with two-thirds of the group receiving annual personal epinephrine prescriptions and using those devices appropriately when indicated. Over the time horizon, the cost of anaphylaxis preparedness and treatment in those with personal epinephrine devices was $25 478 (95% CI, $25 399-$25 557) compared with $654 (95% CI, $645-$663) for those without personal epinephrine, resulting in an average food allergy fatality of 0.00056 (95% CI, 0.000414-0.000706) per patient prescribed self-injectable epinephrine and 0.00148 (95% CI, 0.001242-0.001718) in those not prescribed self-injectable epinephrine. The value-based price (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, $100 000 per quality-adjusted life-year) for personal epinephrine based on 10-fold fatality risk difference was $24. At a market cost of $715 per twin pack, the autoinjector incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $2 742 697 per quality-adjusted life-year. If a hypothetical fatality risk protection from personal epinephrine was modeled at 100-fold, the value-based price ceiling for a personal autoinjector was $264.
Conclusions and relevance: In a simulation of children with peanut allergy, a value-based epinephrine cost has a ceiling of $24 for a personal autoinjector, even at an exaggerated fatality risk.