Researchers at BIPS Describe Findings in Quality of Care (The Potential of High-Dimensional Propensity Scores in Health Services Research: An…

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Researchers at BIPS Describe Findings in Quality of Care (The Potential of High-Dimensional Propensity Scores in Health Services Research: An Exemplary Study on the Quality of Care for Elective Percutaneous Coronary Interventions)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Quality of Care. According to news reporting originating in Bremen, Germany, by VerticalNews journalists, research stated, "Evaluating the potential of the high-dimensional propensity score (HDPS) to control for residual confounding in studies analyzing quality of care based on administrative health insurance data. Secondary data from 2004 to 2009 from three German statutory health insurance providers."

Financial support for this research came from Central Research Institute of Ambulatory Health Care.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from BIPS, "We conducted a retrospective cohort study in patients with elective percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) and compared the mortality risk between the in-and outpatient setting using Cox regression. Adjustment for predefined confounders was performed using conventional propensity score (PS) techniques. Further, an HDPS was calculated based on predefined and empirically selected confounders from the database. Conventional PS methods showed a decreased mortality risk for outpatient compared to inpatient PCIs, while trimming of patients with nonoverlap in the HDPS distribution and weighting resulted in a comparable risk. Most comorbidities were less prevalent in the HDPS-trimmed population compared to the original one. The HDPS methodology may reduce residual confounding by rendering the studied cohort more comparable through restriction. However, results cannot be generalized for the entire study population."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "To provide unbiased results, full assessment of all unmeasured confounders from proxy information in the database would be necessary."

For more information on this research see: The Potential of High-Dimensional Propensity Scores in Health Services Research: An Exemplary Study on the Quality of Care for Elective Percutaneous Coronary Interventions. Health Services Research, 2017;():. Health Services Research can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - www.wiley.com/; Health Services Research - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-6773)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting D. Enders, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS, Bremen, Germany. Additional authors for this research include C. Ohlmeier and E. Garbe.

The publisher of the journal Health Services Research can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Keywords for this news article include: Bremen, Europe, Germany, Quality of Care, Health Insurance, Risk and Prevention.