Observation Period Flavors (First THEMIS-Focus Group 2, now discussed everywhere)

[Ewas (Ewa Sleszynska-Dopiera)]

Hello,

@Christian_Reich @mvanzandt
Are there any updates regarding this topic? There are still only non-overlapping periods in OBSERVATION_PERIOD. To not loose patients during the mapping into OMOP CDM, claims databases tend to include any type of enrollment (so we need to use PAYER_PLAN_PERIOD to know whether a given enrollment period has only medical coverage, only pharmacy coverage or both kinds). If we want to analyze such database, then we would need to add our own solution in-between to restrict to only patients with medical+pharmacy coverage during analysed period. But it means that we would not be able to use ATLAS (not sure how R packages will handle such an input in-between - I haven’t checked yet).

Best regards,
Ewa

[MPhilofsky (Melanie Philofsky)]

Hello @Ewas,

@Ewas

we would need to add our own solution in-between to restrict to only patients with medical+pharmacy coverage during analysed period. But it means that we would not be able to use ATLAS

You can use the payer_plan_period in Atlas as part of your cohort definition. You are able to add many attributes to the inclusion criteria. See this screenshot:

[Ewas (Ewa Sleszynska-Dopiera)]

Hi @MPhilofsky,

Thank you for your answer! I am not an experienced user of ATLAS, so might be wrong but I cannot find a way to require e.g. 365 days of continuous medical and pharmacy enrollment prior to index date.
We would need to combine overlapping records in PAYER_PLAN_PERIOD into continuous period of medical coverage, which I do not think is possible in this section of Atlas.
Am I missing something?

Thank you in advance!
Ewa

[Chris_Knoll]

I hope that we can not overload observation period with different flavors of OP and instead leverage something like payer plan period to represent periods of time of special coverage.