Type 2 diabetes pharmacotherapy trends in high‐risk subgroups

Medication use trends among patients with type 2 diabetes from 2015 to 2019 were investigated in relation to the clinical group‐specific recommendations from the 2018 American Diabetes Association (ADA)/European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) consensus report. Data were drawn from a large health insurance claims database representing Commercial (total patient‐year count: 2,379,704) and Medicare (total patient‐year count: 845,823) insurance programmes (IBM® MarketScan®). The utilization of sodium‐glucose co‐transporter‐2 inhibitors or glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor agonists increased over time but was lower in the Medicare cohort in every year evaluated. Patients diagnosed with obesity received recommended therapies at higher rates than those without obesity. Differences were more modest between those with versus without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) or chronic kidney disease, with greater treatment adoption in those without ASCVD in the Medicare cohort. Utilization of recommended treatments was paradoxically lower in those with versus without heart failure, and worse in the Medicare than in the Commercial cohort. Utilization of sulphonylureas was not different in those with versus without severe hypoglycaemia history. In conclusion, utilization of therapies recommended in the guidelines is increasing overall, which is not preferentially guided by ADA/EASD‐defined clinical groups, and there exists a persistent gap in utilization between Commercial and Medicare populations.