High-Cost Users of Prescription Drugs: A Population-Based Analysis from British Columbia, Canada.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To examine variation in pharmaceutical spending and patient characteristics across prescription drug user groups.

Data sources

British Columbia's population-based linked administrative health and sociodemographic databases (N = 3,460,763).

Study design

We classified individuals into empirically derived prescription drug user groups based on pharmaceutical spending patterns outside hospitals from 2007 to 2011. We examined variation in patient characteristics, mortality, and health services usage and applied hierarchical clustering to determine patterns of concurrent drug use identifying high-cost patients.

Principal findings

Approximately 1 in 20 British Columbians had persistently high prescription costs for 5 consecutive years, accounting for 42 perc

SUBMITTER: Weymann D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5346502 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature