Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:RYTM) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, we do have patients that are on small self-insured plans as well that are on path, as well as, you know, as I went through today, some Medicaid patients as well. The caveat that I will say here is, even though they’re on our free drug program, I think the word that you’re going to keep on hearing is that we have a persistence just in terms of still working on those patient populations as well, whether it’s further education with a payer or just ongoing health for that patient itself. And we have been successful in moving some of these patients off into commercially insured pass. So, it’s constantly evolving from that perspective and we are really just still, you know, starting and continue to engage with all of our customers on that point.

David Meeker : So, thanks Jennifer, maybe just to – Corinne, just to add to that. At this point, I think the number I would think about and Jennifer said, we’re still learning it’s early, etcetera. But about 20% plus or minus of the total scripts are patients who are likely to be on PAP and again reminding you that of that 20% plus or minus you have approximately 10% a little less than 10% that are the Medicare and they go straight there. But most encouragingly and this has been true in our prior experiences as well that patients who go on PAP, go and stay on PAP and we continue to find ways to move them over and patients themselves actually don’t want to be on PAP. They’d much rather be on a more stable, if you will situation where they are being paid through the system.

Corinne Jenkins: Thanks. That’s helpful. And then maybe on the clinical side, you highlighted you expect to complete enrollment for the study in HO in 1Q 2024, are there any factors that could shift that timeline either to be more rapid or delayed for any reason?

David Meeker: Yes, many, probably on both sides. And I think what we’ve shared in – I mean there’s two parts to this. One is just the practical administrative issues of getting sites up and going. We’ve identified the sites that we need. You continue to look further maybe “outstanding site staff is back up if something happened at a site, but in general we have the sites we need.” And so it’s just a matter of working through contracting with these sites and the IRB approvals and the like. Again, as we said, we’re in a queue, not just with our obesity trials, we’re in a queue with any trial going on at that site. So, that’s been slower than we would have liked. Again, our goal is to have all of these sites open in an operational enrolling by the end of Q3.

So that’s one and that could vary. I think we have quite a comfortable guidance there, but you don’t know what you don’t know. And then the second is on terms of patient interest. Patient interest is high. So, we have our investigative meetings coming in May, first one in the U.S. and follow a week or two later in Berlin for the European sites and again, what we’ve heard and what I expect to see there is a high level of interest. And also, I would think some competitive enrollment. Again, we know there’s patients out there eager to get in and these sites are going to know that if all 25 sites are enrolling, there aren’t that many patients per site that will have eligible slots and some of the sites are clearly aiming for much higher than an even distribution.

So, we’ll see how it goes. But I think I’m pretty confident that once more than running for the patient enrollment .

Corinne Jenkins: Great. Thank you.