Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety
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Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf · Sep 2014
ReviewMeasuring frailty using claims data for pharmacoepidemiologic studies of mortality in older adults: evidence and recommendations.
Geriatric frailty is a common syndrome of older adults that is characterized by increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes and influences treatment choice. Pharmacoepidemiologic studies that rely on administrative claims data in older adults are limited by confounding due to unmeasured frailty. A claims-based frailty score may be useful to minimize confounding by frailty in such databases. We provide an overview of definitions and measurement of frailty, evaluated the claims-based models of frailty in literature, and recommend ways to improve frailty adjustment in claims analysis. ⋯ We found little research conducted on development and application of a claims-based frailty index for confounding adjustment in pharmacoepidemiologic studies in older adults. More research is needed to advance this innovative, potentially useful approach by incorporating the expertise from aging research.
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Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf · Sep 2014
MAT-CAP: a novel medication assessment tool to explore adherence to clinical practice guidelines in community-acquired pneumonia.
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a disease with high morbidity and mortality. Adherence to clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in treatment of CAP is associated with favourable outcome. We aimed to develop and validate a medication assessment tool (MAT) to explore adherence to CPG recommendations in patients with CAP admitted to a Norwegian hospital. The tool is named MAT-CAP. ⋯ We have demonstrated content validity, feasibility and reliability of a 15-criterion MAT-CAP. Adherence results from applying MAT-CAP criteria pinpointed areas with good clinical performance and areas with improvement potentials.
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Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf · Sep 2014
Prescriber response to unsolicited prescription drug monitoring program reports in Massachusetts.
To describe prescriber response to unsolicited patient reports from the Massachusetts prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP). ⋯ Unsolicited reporting of PDMP data has the potential to improve clinical practice by alerting providers about patients with multiple prescribers and potentially medically unnecessary prescriptions.