Sensitivity of the Medication Possession Ratio to Modelling Decisions in Large Claims Databases.

Objectives: When preparing administrative medical and pharmacy claims data for analysis, decisions about data clean up and analytical approach need to be made. However, information about the effects of various modelling decisions on adherence measures such as the medication possession ratio (MPR) is limited. We address this gap with this study.

Measuring quality in diabetes care: an expert-based statistical approach.

We present a methodology for using health insurance claims data to monitor quality of care. The method uses a statistical model trained on the quality ratings of a medical expert. In a pilot study, the expert rated the quality of care received over the course of two years by 101 diabetes patients.

Depression and costs of health care.

Background: In spite of its global importance, the interaction between depression and chronic comorbid diseases remains incompletely understood with regard to prevalence, severity of disease, and potential causative factors mediating this interaction.

Objective: The authors sought to compare overall medical costs in nondepressed and depressed individuals.

Method: Insurance claims for 618,780 patients were examined for total annual non-mental health cost of care in 11 chronic diseases.