Adequacy of Prescription Drug Coverage in Long-term Care.

Research Objective: Affordable access to medications is important to Medicare enrollees in long-term care (LTC), yet, it is unknown if prescription drug coverage is universal and adequate to meet their high medication needs.

Study Design: We assessed enrollment in prescription drug coverage, out-of-pocket (OOP) payments and medication use in a nationwide LTC database of prescription-level, resident-level, and facility-level data for the period 2011-2013. Inadequate drug coverage was defined as ≥50% medications paid for OOP.