259 Abstracts children. Combined therapy of ICS + BD with or without LAs was observed in 70% of privately insured children compared to 44% of social assistance children. Despite apparently better management in the private group, OS use, indicating a severe exacerbation, was 16% in the private compared to 12% in the publicly insured group. While the average annual number of claims were similar in the private and public groups (7.3 vs. 7.1), privately insured children had more ICS claims (3.2 vs. 2.9) and fewer BD claims (2.9 vs. 3.9). CONCLUSIONS: Privately insured children appeared to be better managed than social assis- tance children. Differences in socioeconomic status and formu- lary listings may explain observed differences. Policies governing public and private drug plans must ensure adequate access to necessary medications for children with asthma. PAS4 PATTERNS OF PHARMACOTHERAPY UTILIZATION AMONG CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH MULTIPLE ASTHMA- RELATED MORBID EVENTS ENROLLED IN A MEDICAID PROGRAM D’Souza A O , Smith M, Roy AN West Virginia University, Morgantown,WV, USA OBJECTIVE: To describe the asthma-related pharmacotherapy utilization following a first and second morbid event for asthma among children and adolescents enrolled in Medicaid. METHODS: Medicaid hospitalization and emergency room (ER) claims with a primary ICD-9 CM diagnosis code for asthma dated 2002 were extracted for recipients less than 21 years of age. The corresponding asthma-related prescription claims also were extracted. Recipients with at least two morbid events (defined as two consecutive ER or hospital visits at least 8 days apart) formed the study cohort. Pharmacotherapy use for each recipient was analyzed for up to a 30-day period following his/her first and second morbid event. RESULTS: A total of 214 recipients was identified as the study cohort consisting mainly of infants less than 6 years of age (50.0%), males (61.7%), and whites (82.2%). The proportion of recipients who filled a prescription for a controller medication following the second event was greater than the proportion following the first event (40.2% versus 34.1%). A greater proportion of recipients used leukotriene modifiers (24.3%) and inhaled corticosteroids (20.1%) than other controller drug classes following the first event, as well as following the second event (25.7% and 21.0%, respectively). Following the first event, 59.6% of recipients who used a leukotriene modifier continued using the same medication after the second event, compared to only 27.9% of recipients who used inhaled corticosteroids. With respect to demographic groups, there was a very low proportion of recipients who were black who used controller pharmacotherapy following the first (14.7%) and second event (23.5%). CONCLUSION: Although there was an increase in the proportion of recipients who uti- lized controller pharmacotherapy after a second morbid event, there was a low use of these medications overall. Among demo- graphic groups, blacks had the lowest utilization of controller medications following morbid events. PAS5 DRUG COST ANALYSIS OF TREATMENT FOR ASTHMA OUTPATIENTS IN TAIWAN Lu CH 1 ,Tarn YH 2 1 National Defense Medical Center,Taipei,Taipei,Taiwan; 2 Taipei City Hospital,Taipei,Taiwan OBJECTIVES: To investigate the trend of treatment costs for asthmatic outpatients in Taiwan from 1998 to 2002. METHODS: Claimed database from Bureau of National Health Insurance of Taiwan’s whole population were used to compute the total treatment costs and drug related costs on asthmatic out- patients during the year 1998 to 2002. Claims with ICD-9-CM code of asthma were obtained and then sorted per person to cal- culate the sum of treatment costs per person per year and the ratio of drug costs per total treatment costs. RESULTS: The fol- lowing present the yearly data from 1998 to 2002: 1) mean drug costs per person per year: NT$.1286, 1486, 1873, 1940 and 2114; 2) mean of days per person per year: 26, 29, 36, 40 and 43 days; 3) total treatment costs of asthma : NT$. 4.3 billion, 2.9 billion, 2.4 billion, 2.5 billion and 2.7 billion; and 4) the ratio of drug costs/total costs: 54.92%, 56.48%, 58.15%, 58.52% and 58.84%. CONCLUSIONS: Drug therapy for patients with asthma play an important role in asthmatic care. In Taiwan, the study indicated that drug costs per person per year is growing every year. Future research will investigate the appropriateness of these drug therapy and posible drug savings in the future. PAS6 IMPACT OF ASTHMA KNOWLEDGE ON HEALTH OUTCOMES IN PEDIATRIC PATIENTS Suksomboon N , Montakantikul P Mahidol University, Payathai, Bangkok,Thailand OBJECTIVE: To determine whether asthma knowledge of care- givers could improve health outcomes in pediatric patients. METHODS: The study design was a prospective randomized controlled trial in asthma patients aged less than 12 years-old. The study was carried out in asthma clinic at Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health, Bangkok, Thailand between August 2002 and March 2003. Eleven active and 11 control patients were invited to attend a clinic. At the clinic the phar- macists conducted interviews and asked all caregivers to answer a questionnaire containing 18 true-false questions regarding asthma knowledge. After completing the questionnaire, phar- macists provided knowledge of asthma regarding treatment and environmental care to caregivers in the intervention group. During the study period, patients in both groups continued to receive the usual care from their physicians. Patients and care- givers were followed up during the next six months and the same process was repeated. The outcome measure was the rate of hos- pitalization in asthma patient between groups. RESULTS: At baseline there are no significant differences in asthma knowledge between intervention and control group. At the end of study, the intervention group is generally better at answering the asthma questions correctly. The number of hospitalization in the inter- vention group decreases from 31 to 13 (p < 0.05), whereas there is no statistically significant difference in the control group. CONCLUSIONS: The present work suggests that pharmacist’s involvement in asthma clinic has increased caregivers’ knowledge leading to a decrease in the number of hospitalization. However, further training is required for caregivers to optimize their role in helping asthma patients. Further work could be carried out to determine whether the results of this study are reflective of the knowledge in adult patients. PAS7 DIRECT AND INDIRECT COST OF ASTHMA IN AN EMPLOYER POPULATION Atherl y A , Nurmagambetov T,Williams S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this abstract is to examine the direct and indirect costs associated with asthma in an employer population. This work improves on previous studies of employer populations with asthma by incorporating measures of the indi-