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Comment on: Patient out-of-pocket costs for guideline-recommended treatments for erectile dysfunction: a medicare cost modeling analysis

International Journal of Impotence Research (2024)Cite this article

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Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a very common yet chronically undertreated condition. Societal and psychological pressure on male sexual function regardless of age and medical history not uncommonly makes it all too difficult for many men to seek specialist consultation or even treatment. Compounded with high costs of health care in the United States (US), it is unsurprising that only 10% of men living with ED undergo treatment [1]. As it is well documented that men with untreated ED can develop a variety of psychosocial problems that significantly impair their quality of life, it is imperative that barriers to treatment be minimized [2]. In this study, Nguyen et al provided a valuable contribution by helping to inform healthcare providers of the real considerations that patients grapple with when seeking medical care for ED [3].

There are a multitude of factors that patients consider when engaging in the shared decision-making process with their healthcare providers, including but not limited to efficacy, duration and convenience of undergoing treatment, personal values, and financial burden [4]. While physicians are trained to be well-informed and adept at counseling patients through most factors that arise in decision making, they are overwhelmingly unable to accurately predict out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for prescribed treatments even when provided with the details of their patients’ insurance plans [5]. In the absence of universal national healthcare coverage, as is the case in the US, the possibility of a financial burden associated with undergoing treatment tends to take on an emphasized role in most patients’ decision making [6].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Rosemary Iwuala

  2. The University of Chicago, Section of Urology, Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Omer A. Raheem

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  1. Rosemary Iwuala
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  2. Omer A. Raheem
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All authors contributed equally to manuscript. Authors RI and OAR contributed to analyzing data and writing manuscripts and references. Author OAR contributed and supervised the complete and final version of the manuscript and provided extensive revisions and final conclusions.

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Correspondence to Omer A. Raheem.

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Iwuala, R., Raheem, O.A. Comment on: Patient out-of-pocket costs for guideline-recommended treatments for erectile dysfunction: a medicare cost modeling analysis. Int J Impot Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-024-00899-2

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