Researchers from Yale School of Public Health Report Details of New Studies and Findings in the Area of Managed Care (Losses to Follow-Up in a Nationally Representative Study of Community-Living Older Americans: Two Approaches to Censoring and …): Managed Care

2025 SEP 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Data detailed on Managed Care have been presented. According to news reporting originating in New Haven, Connecticut, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “In the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), use of its Sensitive files leads to incomplete ascertainment of mortality, largely because of losses to follow-up. To account for these losses, we compared two censoring approaches for evaluating mortality.”

Financial support for this research came from National Institutes of Health.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the Yale School of Public Health, “In a hybrid approach, most participants were censored at the time of last contact, while the remainder were censored at the time of last completed interview. In the other approach, all participants were censored at the time of last completed interview (LCI). All-cause mortality was evaluated among 7608 and 7498 community-living members of the 2011 (over 10 years) and 2015 (over 5 years) cohorts based on the Sensitive files, with linked Medicare data serving as the reference standard. Using the hybrid and LCI approaches, the median (IQR) follow-up times among nondecedents were 7.7 (5.9-8.7) and 8.8 (6.3-9.9) years shorter for the Sensitive files than Medicare data in the 2011 cohort. The corresponding values in the 2015 cohort were 2.9 (1.8-3.8) and 4.0 (2.2-4.9) years. For both cohorts, cumulative mortality based on the Sensitive files relative to the Medicare data was modestly lower for the hybrid approach but comparable for the LCI approach. The incidence rate ratios (95% CI) for the Sensitive files relative to the Medicare data in the 2011 and 2015 cohorts, respectively, were 0.89 (0.87, 0.91) and 0.89 (0.86, 0.93) for the hybrid approach and 0.98 (0.95, 1.00) and 0.97 (0.94, 1.00) for the LCI approach. However, the numbers of participants at risk for death overtime were considerably smaller for the latter than the former approach.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “When evaluating mortality using the NHATS Sensitive files, investigators should consider censoring all participants who are lost to follow-up at the time of the last completed interview, recognizing potential trade-offs in terms of reductions in power and precision.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Losses to Follow-Up in a Nationally Representative Study of Community-Living Older Americans: Two Approaches to Censoring and Implications for Mortality Outcomes. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2025. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Journal of the American Geriatrics Society - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1532-5415)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Jingchen Liang, Dept. of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Additional authors for this research include Thomas M. Gill, Robert D. Becher and Kendra Davis-Plourde.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.70093. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA.

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