Study Findings on Managed Care Are Outlined in Reports from Harvard School of Medicine (Predicting 1-Year Statin Adherence Among Prevalent Users: A…

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Study Findings on Managed Care Are Outlined in Reports from Harvard School of Medicine (Predicting 1-Year Statin Adherence Among Prevalent Users: A Retrospective Cohort Study)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- New research on Managed Care is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating in Boston, Massachusetts, by VerticalNews journalists, research stated, "Attempts to predict who is at risk of future nonadherence have largely focused on predictions at the time of therapy initiation; however, these users are only a small proportion of all patients on therapy at any point in time. Methods to predict nonadherence for established medication users, which have not been previously described in the literature, would be helpful to guide efforts to enhance the use of evidence-based therapies."

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the Harvard School of Medicine, "To test approaches for adherence prediction among prevalent statin users, namely the use of short-term filling behavior, investigator specified predictors from medical and pharmacy administrative claims, and the empirical selection of potential predictors using the high-dimensional propensity score variable selection algorithm. Medical and prescription claims data from a large national health insurer were used to create a cohort of patients who filled statin medication prescriptions in January 2012. We defined 6 groups of adherence predictors and estimated 10 main models to predict medication adherence in the full cohort. The same was done for the population stratified based on the days supply of the index statin prescription (<= 30 days vs. >30 days). The study cohort consisted of 93,777 individuals, 58.4% of which were adherent to statins during follow-up. The use of 3 pre-index adherence predictors alone achieved a c-statistic of 0.70. Investigator-specified and empirically selected pharmacy, medical, and demographic variables did substantially worse (0.57-0.60). The use of 3 indicators of post-index adherence achieved a higher c-statistic than the best-performing model using pre-index information (0.74 vs. 0.72). The addition of 3 pre-index adherence predictors further improved discrimination (0.78)."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "This analysis demonstrated the ability to predict adherence among medication users using filling behavior before and immediately after an index prescription fill."

For more information on this research see: Predicting 1-Year Statin Adherence Among Prevalent Users: A Retrospective Cohort Study. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 2017;23(4):494-502. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy can be contacted at: Acad Managed Care Pharmacy, 100 N Pitt St, 400, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134, USA.

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting N.K. Choudhry, Harvard Med Sch, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include J.M. Franklin, D.L. Isaman, O.S. Matlin, A.Y. Tong, C.M. Spettell, T.A. Brennan, W.H. Shrank and N.K. Choudhry.

Keywords for this news article include: Boston, Massachusetts, United States, North and Central America, Managed Care, Risk and Prevention, Harvard School of Medicine.