Women's & Children's Health Outcomes

Women's & Children's Health programs offer cost savings and improvements in patient compliance. Below is a sampling of Alere's best program-specific outcomes.

Diabetes in Pregnancy | Obstetrical Hypertension | Nausea and Vomiting | Preterm Labor | Maternity Management

Diabetes in Pregnancy Outcomes

In a descriptive report of 10,335 patients conducted from 2000 to 2007, Alere produced the followed results for insulin-dependent and non-insulin requiring patients:

Gestational diabetes (non-insulin):

  • Admitted only 9.3 percent of newborns to the neonatal intensive care unit born to women with gestational diabetes, a significant drop from a benchmark study1 in which 25 percent of neonates born to women receiving conventional treatment were admitted
  • In less than one week, the number of patients complying with blood-glucose testing increased from 6.7 percent to 64.6 percent

Pregestational diabetes (insulin-dependent):

  • 40.4 percent reduction in out-of-target blood glucose levels (post-prandial 1-hour)
  • 300 percent improvement in compliance with blood glucose testing
  • 17.9 percent reduction in the number of Type 2 diabetes patients with A1C greater than 6 percent

Obstetrical Hypertension Outcomes

Findings in a cost analysis showed that outpatient versus inpatient management of hypertension during pregnancy yields similar maternal fetal outcomes, though with significantly fewer maternal antepartum hospital days. The study compared one group of women using Alere's services to one group not using Alere.2

  • The average number of hospital days for women in the Alere group was 1.7 compared to 12.4 for the non-Alere group
  • Inpatient and outpatient costs combined were $9,533 for the Alere group versus $19,180 for the non-Alere group

Nausea and Vomiting Outcomes

Results from a study3 published November 2004 in Managed Care magazine showed that Alere's NVP program reduced NVP symptoms for 382 out of the 428 women receiving outpatient treatment via subcutaneous pump prescribed by their physician from 2000 to 2002.

Other results:
  • 78 percent increase in weight gain or stabilization
  • 89 percent reduction in nausea and vomiting symptoms
  • Decrease in the number of people admitted to the hospital before Alere's NVP program from 65.4 percent to 3.3 percent

Preterm Labor Outcomes

Alere showed substantial costs savings in an internal report of 25,126 patients with singleton, twin and triplet gestations using Alere's pump and monitoring services from 2004 to 2008.

  • For every dollar spent on Alere's homecare services, $4.14 was saved
  • An average of $21,259 was saved per pregnancy, including the program cost
  • Alere saved over $114 million in antenatal hospital admissions

Maternity Management Outcomes

The number of days infants born to women participating in Alere's Obstetrical Disease Management Program needed to stay in the NICU in the year 2008 was 38 percent below a national benchmark4 average of 2,122 NICU days per 1,000 births.

Additionally, the percentage of very low birth weight infants was 0.93 percent, while the national average5 was 1.49 percent. Likewise, low birth weight infants comprised 7.52 percent of total Maternity Management Program births, compared to the national rate of 8.3 percent.

1 Langer O, Rodriguez DA, et al, Intensified versus conventional management of gestational diabetes, American Journal of Obstetrical Gynecology, 1994; 170(4): 1036-47.

2 Barton JR, Stanziano GJ, Sibai BM, Monitored outpatient management of mild gestational hypertension remote from term, American Journal of Obstetrical Gynecology, 1994; 170:765-9.

3 David G. Lombardi, MD, Niki B. Istwan, RN, Debbie J. Rhea, MPH, John M. O'Brien, MD, John R. Barton, MD, University of Kentucky, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lexington, Ky.; Alere, Department of Clinical Research, Marietta, Ga.; Central Baptist Hospital, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Lexington, Ky.
 
4 National Benchmark for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) admissions was obtained from a national perinatal hospital discharge database containing claims representing newborn infant admissions during 2007.
 
5 Martin JA, Hamilton BE, Sutton PD, et al. Births: Final Data for 2006. National vital statistics reports; vol 57 no 7. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2009.