Reverse auction: a potential strategy for reduction of pharmacological therapy cost.

Background: Polypharmacy is a significant economic burden.

Objective: We tested whether using reverse auction (RA) as compared with commercial pharmacy (CP) to purchase medicine results in lower pharmaceutical costs for heart failure (HF) and heart transplantation (HT) outpatients.

Methods: We compared the costs via RA versus CP in 808 HF and 147 HT patients followed from 2009 through 2011, and evaluated the influence of clinical and demographic variables on cost.