Data Visualization and Data Summary - Text Mining Techniques for Healthcare Provider Quality Determination - page 65

Figure 32. Number of doses in a year for Fosamax®
Figure 33. Number of doses in a year for Fosamax® daily at 10 mg level
doses with a smaller peak at 380 doses. At once a day, the second peak indicates patient compliance with
medication requirements. There is one remaining medication we considered, that of estrogen. Figure 36
gives two different doses.
The dose peaks are very different. For the 0.625 dose, it occurs at 200 doses; for the 0.3 dose, it oc-
curs at 100 doses. There appears to be more compliance at the higher dose.
Once we have these distributions, we can define a level of compliance. We can divide the curve into
quantiles, or we can define it in terms of a percentage of full compliance. For example, a patient who is
prescribed 20 doses of Fosamax® when 52 are needed can be defined as 20/52=38% compliant.
Whereas estrogen can be prescribed for many different patient complaints, the remaining drugs are
prescribed solely for osteoporosis. We need to consider the patient conditions from the MEPS that are
listed in the prescription medications datafile. Therefore, we consider the ICD9 codes that are associated
with each of the medications. For Actonel®, there are 646 (out of a total of 996) primary codes given
as 733, or Other disorders of bone and cartilage. The specific codes for osteoporosis are 733.01 (Senile