Cost analysis of a provincial drug program to guide the treatment of upper gastrointestinal disorders.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Concerned with the rising costs of its drug programs for seniors and social-assistance recipients, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador requested physicians and pharmacists at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, and members of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association and the Newfoundland Pharmaceutical Association to provide guidance to the health care community for the use of drugs to treat upper gastrointestinal disorders. METHODS: Algorithms for the management of dyspepsia and gastrointestinal reflux disease were created and distributed to all physicians and pharmacists in the province in June 1996. On July 1, 1996, the provincial government implemented a program to restrict payment for proton-pump inhibitors through its drug programs to situations defined by the algorithms. Restrictions were not applied to the prescribing of cimetidine, ranitidine and prokinetic agents. The status of famotidine and nizatidine was changed from "open benefit" to "special consideration," which requires prescribers to request authorization of their use on a case-by-case basis. RESULTS: Between July 1 and Dec. 31, 1996, 973 of 1078 requests for a proton-pump inhibitor were approved (679 for gastroesophageal reflux, 186 for Helicobacter pylori eradication, 55 for ulcer treatment and 53 for other reasons). The program resulted in a sustained reduction in drug expenditures. Total drug expenditures, which had risen from $39.0 million in 1992/93 to $50.8 million in 1995/96, fell after implementation of the program to $46.4 million in 1996/97 because of a decrease of more than 80% in the use of proton-pump inhibitors. Expenditures on proton-pump inhibitors, which had increased from $0.7 million for the 6 months ending March 1993 to $1.6 million for the 6 months ending March 1996, decreased to $0.3 million for the 6 months ending March 1997. The use of H2-antagonists, but not prokinetic agents, increased concomitantly with the decline in proton-pump inhibitor use. Compared with the year preceding implementation of the program, annual combined expenditures in the subsequent 3 years for H2-antagonists, prokinetic drugs and proton-pump inhibitors were reduced by $1.6 million, $1.7 million and $1.0 million, respectively. Feedback from physicians and pharmacists was supportive for the clinical information and prescribing guidelines. Concerns were mostly limited to process issues. INTERPRETATION: The program, designed by health care professionals, approved by health care associations and implemented by the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to guide the treatment of upper gastrointestinal disorders, has achieved a substantial reduction in drug expenditures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".