Health care utilization and receipt of cholesterol testing by veterans with and those without mental illness.

Objective: We examined the relationship between mental illness, health care utilization and rates of cholesterol testing.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using Veterans Affairs (VA) administrative data on 64,490 United States veterans who used VA New England Health Care System outpatient services between January 1998 and June 2001. A total of 10,100 veterans (15.

Three complementary definitions of polypharmacy: methods, application and comparison of findings in a large prescription database.

Purpose: To develop and compare three operational definitions of polypharmacy using a large prescription database.

Methods: We defined Cumulative polypharmacy as all prescriptions filled during a 178 day window--which captured 95% of eventual refills as calculated from Kaplan-Meier and cumulative incidence curves. Continuous polypharmacy was all prescriptions filled in two such windows 6 months apart.