Administrative costs of prior authorizations for glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Glucagon in this observational study publication.

To compare the total staff time spent on GLP-1 agonists prescribed for weight loss vs GLP-1 agonists for diabetes and other prescription medications.

The Mann-Whitney U-test was applied to compare continuous variables (hands-on time, cost), whereas the Fisher's exact test was used for dichotomous variables (approval rate).

Why It Was Studied

Prior authorizations (PAs) help ensure appropriate prescription drug use but can be time-consuming for prescribers, clinic staff, and patients.

However, the administrative impact of processing PA requests for glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists prescribed for weight loss is unknown.

How the Study Was Run

This prospective observational study was conducted at UC Davis Health, a large academic health system from October 2024 to April 2025.

PA tasks were categorized into 3 groups: (1) GLP-1 agonists for weight loss, (2) GLP-1 agonists for diabetes, and (3) top 10 non-GLP-1 agonist medications processed by volume at UC Davis Health.

A sample size of 50 PAs per group was selected based on projected mean PA process times of 10 minutes for weight loss GLP-1 agonists and 7 minutes for diabetes GLP-1 agonists (β = 0.2, α = 0.05).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Diabetes Mellitus, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1, Hypoglycemic Agents, Weight Loss and Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Glucagon.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2026 (Journal of managed care & specialty pharmacy), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Glucagon compound page, all human trials.