The provenance of records populating my drug exposure tables are varied. Most commonly they derive from prescription or reconciliation data.
My current concern is primarily with the polypharmacy for patients on maintenance medications.
While OHDSI documentation covers nicely prescription data, I have not been successful in identifying protocols for handling the intelligence deriving from medication reconciliation. As patients with complex medication profiles may be receiving their care from multiple providers not sharing a common prescribing platform, reconciliation is critical for assessing polypharmacy.
My current approach is to assume that, in the absence of the rarely seen drug exposure end date, the patient remains on a drug for 1 year subsequent to the final visit in which mention is made of the drug in reconciliation data.
- Does my approach correspond with what others are doing?
- Are there better approaches to consider?
Should my code be useful to others, I will be happy to share it upon completion.
Thanks,
Gerry