Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP
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Res Social Adm Pharm · Mar 2006
Addressing the issue of channeling bias in observational studies with propensity scores analysis.
Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs) remain the gold standard for determining the utility of pharmaceuticals especially from a safety and efficacy standpoint. However, restrictive entry criteria and stringent protocols can be barriers to generalizing RCT findings to real world practices and outcomes. Observational studies overcome these limitations of RCTs since they are representative of real world populations and practices. ⋯ During the course of this manuscript we discuss tests for determining the quality of the derived propensity score, various techniques for utilizing propensity scores, and also the potential limitations of this technique. With the increasing availability of high quality pharmaceutical and medical claims data for use in observational studies, increased attention must be given to analytic techniques that adjust optimally for non-random assignment and resulting channeling bias. For research studies using observational study designs, propensity score analysis offers a reasonable solution to address the limitation of non-random assignment, especially when RCTs are too costly, time-consuming or not ethically feasible.