A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Williams, Nicholas, Rudolph, Kara E.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Williams, Nicholas
Rudolph, Kara E.
author_facet Williams, Nicholas
Rudolph, Kara E.
contents Objective: Freely preprocess drug codes recorded in electronic health records and insurance claims to drug classes that may then be used in biomedical research. Materials and Methods: We developed a drug classification pipeline for linking National Drug Codes to the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification. To implement our solution, we created an R package interface to the National Library of Medicine's RxNorm API. Results: Using the classification pipeline, 59.4% of all unique NDC were linked to an ATC, resulting in 95.5% of all claims being successfully linked to a drug classification. We identified 12,004 unique NDC codes that were classified as being an opioid or non-opioid prescription for treating pain. Discussion: Our proposed pipeline performed similarly well to other NDC classification routines using commercial databases. A check of a small, random sample of non-active NDC found the pipeline to be accurate for classifying these codes. Conclusion: The RxNorm NDC classification pipeline is a practical and reliable tool for categorizing drugs in large-scale administrative claims data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_01514
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm
Williams, Nicholas
Rudolph, Kara E.
Quantitative Methods
Databases
Objective: Freely preprocess drug codes recorded in electronic health records and insurance claims to drug classes that may then be used in biomedical research. Materials and Methods: We developed a drug classification pipeline for linking National Drug Codes to the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification. To implement our solution, we created an R package interface to the National Library of Medicine's RxNorm API. Results: Using the classification pipeline, 59.4% of all unique NDC were linked to an ATC, resulting in 95.5% of all claims being successfully linked to a drug classification. We identified 12,004 unique NDC codes that were classified as being an opioid or non-opioid prescription for treating pain. Discussion: Our proposed pipeline performed similarly well to other NDC classification routines using commercial databases. A check of a small, random sample of non-active NDC found the pipeline to be accurate for classifying these codes. Conclusion: The RxNorm NDC classification pipeline is a practical and reliable tool for categorizing drugs in large-scale administrative claims data.
title A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm
topic Quantitative Methods
Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01514