Evaluation of a Methodological Approach to Define An Inception Cohort of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Using Administrative Data

5 years ago

Evaluation of a Methodological Approach to Define An Inception Cohort of Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Using Administrative Data

Jie Zhang, Lang Chen, Jeffrey R Curtis, Fenglong Xie, Jeffrey D Greenberg

Background/Purpose Identifying incident rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is desirable to create inception cohorts. We evaluated an approach to identify incident RA in health plan claims data. Methods Both Medicare and commercial claims data was linked to Corrona, a U.S. RA registry. We evaluated accuracy of year of RA onset in the registry (gold standard) versus different claims algorithms, varying ICD-9 codes for RA/arthritis, duration of health plan enrollment preceding diagnosis (minimum of 1 vs. 2 years) and use of RA medications. Results were reported as positive predictive values (PPVs) of the claims-based algorithm for incident RA. Results Depending on algorithm tested and whether patients were enrolled in Medicare or the commercial health plan, the PPVs for incident RA ranged from 68%-81%. A 2 year clean period free of all RA-related diagnoses and RA medications was somewhat more optimal, although by comparison, a 1 year clean period yielded similar PPVs and retained approximately 90% more RA patients for analysis. Conclusion Claims-based algorithms can accurately identify incident RA. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/acr.23533