Kanika Monga, MD, and Angus Worthing, MD, Discuss ACR Survey on Biosimilars and COVID-19

A recent survey conducted by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) indicated that a large portion of patients with rheumatic diseases were unsure if they had been prescribed a biosimilar before, suggesting a major knowledge gap among patients on how biosimilars differ from reference biologics. Additionally, the survey showed a 52% decline in the percentage of respondents who said they were currently being treated by a rheumatologist, vs the number under treatment a year earlier. Patients also reported that wait times to be seen by a rheumatologist increased between 2019 and 2020. Both of these findings were likely partly due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has changed how practices conduct business and deprived some patients of the economic means and health insurance to continue seeing their provider. We sat down with Kanika Monga, MD, a rheumatologist at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas and a member of the ACR’s Communication and Marketing Committee,