Data mining to investigate the treatment of asthma.

摘要

Asthma is a common, chronic disease in the United States, with increasing prevalence. Many patients do not realize therapeutic goals because of poor disease management. The purpose of this study is to examine the costs of the commonly used drugs used to treat asthma. We examined the contribution of individual, government and private agencies for medication payment. We next compared the prescription cost to the cost of emergency room visits. The data are taken from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. SAS Enterprise Guide was used for preprocessing and data visualization.;We downloaded the MEPS HC-094A defined as the 2005 prescribed medicine files and HC-094E defined as the 2005 emergency room visits. There were 16,347 asthma-related prescriptions and 187 emergency room visits. Kernel density estimation was used to examine the data. It was found that prednisone is the most inexpensive drug and the drug, albuterol, is the most common, even if it is more expensive. The contribution of the government is higher than the amount paid by individuals and other agencies. The kernel density estimations of charges and payments show that as the value increases, the probabilities of paying those amounts drop sharply. It has been found that the payments for facilities is approximately five times more than the payments for physicians, and the total costs of emergency room visits is about three times the total cost of prescribed medicines. Although the visits to the emergency department seem occasional, they are more expensive than the prescribed medicines.