Many policy and research questions relating to prescription drugs and non acute morbidity status of a population cannot be answered in the absence of a pharmacy database. Meanwhile, federal and state officials as well as health insurance companies and health care purchasers have devoted considerable attention to the rising cost of prescription drugs in the United States. Utah Health Data Committee (UHDC), a Utah Governor appointed statutory committee, has launched a new statewide initiative to collect and report pharmacy claims data to improve outpatient medication safety and effective use of prescription drugs. This proposed research infrastructure-building project is to support the UHDC initiative by fulfilling following three aims:
Aim 1 : To expand Utah statewide health care data infrastructure by adding insurers pharmacy claims data to the existing hospital inpatient, ambulatory surgery, and emergency department encounter databases.
Aim 2 : To develop a set of pharmacy claims data-based indictors for surveillance of crucial illnesses and diagnoses for which no other sources of data are present in the State of Utah.
Aim 3 : To report the developed indicators at the state level and analyze the variations among geographic areas and various sub-populations to identify health risks and risk populations, quality improvement areas, and to support public health educations on outpatient medication safety and effective use of prescription drugs.
