A study of refill non-compliance and predictors of refill non-compliance to tricyclic and SSRI antidepressants in a population setting.

摘要

The current study utilized the Atlantic Blue Cross Prescription Drug Database to examine patient refill compliance to antidepressants from the tricyclic and selective-serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI) classes. The primary goals of the study were to describe and compare non-compliance between the tricyclic and SSRI users, to ascertain whether patient age and gender, treatment cost, and regimen complexity were predictors of non-compliance, and to evaluate the problems involved with utilizing the Atlantic Blue Cross Database for compliance research.;Non-compliance was measured by using three outcome measures. First the percentage of non-compliant days (defined as the percentage of days during treatment without medication) was found. Second, the early medication 'stoppers' were compared to the medication 'continuers'. Finally, the time course of non-compliance was studied by finding the time till the first non-compliant gap for users.;A number of problems were identified with the Blue Cross Database. In a number of cases, data was missing. Data contamination problems were identified that were probably the result of data entry errors. Cleaning protocols were developed to deal with some of these problems. A number of other problems were also identified which were inherent to the database. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).