Increased health costs from mandated Therapeutic Substitution of proton pump inhibitors in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: In 2003, British Columbia's PharmaCare programme implemented a drug reimbursement policy called Therapeutic Substitution, which required patients with acid-related diseases, primarily gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GERD), to make a medically unnecessary switch from their prescribed proton pump inhibitor (PPI) to the cheapest available brand name PPI (Pariet, rabeprazole sodium), comprising a different (nongeneric) chemical. AIM: To evaluate the independent effects of PPI Therapeutic Substitution on individual healthcare utilization among those complying with the policy. METHODS: We used the BC Ministry of Health Services' individual-level linked data, allowing isolation of healthcare utilization for the entire population of PPI consumers from 2002 to 2005. RESULTS: After controlling for individual case variation in age, gender and a proxy for pre-existing health status, regression analysis revealed statistically significant greater overall use of PPIs, physician services and hospital services independently associated with patients who complied with Therapeutic Substitution. Over the 3-year period 2003-2005, this represented net healthcare expenditures totalling approximately C$43.51 million (C$9.11 million in total PPI drug expenditures, C$24.65 million for physician services and C$9.75 million for hospital services). CONCLUSION: Medically unnecessary drug switching caused by compliance with Therapeutic Substitution policy appears to be independently associated with higher overall healthcare utilization.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".