Research article

Development of a health care utilisation data-based index for rheumatoid arthritis severity: a preliminary study

Gladys Ting¹ , Sebastian Schneeweiss¹ , Richard Scranton² , Jeffrey N Katz³ , Michael E Weinblatt³ , Melissa Young² , Jerry Avorn¹ and Daniel H Solomon^1,3

¹Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 1620 Tremont Street, Suite 3030, Boston, MA 02120, USA

²Masschusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center, VA Cooperative Studies Program, VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 South Huntington Avenue, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130, USA

³Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA

author email corresponding author email

Arthritis Research & Therapy 2008, 10:R95doi:10.1186/ar2482

Published:	21 August 2008

Abstract

Introduction

Health care utilisation ('claims') databases contain information about millions of patients and are an important source of information for a variety of study types. However, they typically do not contain information about disease severity. The goal of the present study was to develop a health care claims index for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) severity using a previously developed medical records-based index for RA severity (RA medical records-based index of severity [RARBIS]).

Methods

The study population consisted of 120 patients from the Veteran's Administration (VA) Health System. We previously demonstrated the construct validity of the RARBIS and established its convergent validity with the Disease Activity Score (DAS28). Potential claims-based indicators were entered into a linear regression model as independent variables and the RARBIS as the dependent variable. The claims-based index for RA severity (CIRAS) was created using the coefficients from models with the highest coefficient of determination (R²) values selected by automated modelling procedures. To compare our claims-based index with our medical records-based index, we examined the correlation between the CIRAS and the RARBIS using Spearman non-parametric tests.

Results

The forward selection models yielded the highest model R² for both the RARBIS with medications (R² = 0.31) and the RARBIS without medications (R² = 0.26). Components of the CIRAS included tests for inflammatory markers, number of chemistry panels and platelet counts ordered, rheumatoid factor, the number of rehabilitation and rheumatology visits, and Felty's syndrome diagnosis. The CIRAS demonstrated moderate correlations with the RARBIS with medication and the RARBIS without medication sub-scales.

Conclusion

We developed the CIRAS that showed moderate correlations with a previously validated records-based index of severity. The CIRAS may serve as a potentially important tool in adjusting for RA severity in pharmacoepidemiology studies of RA treatment and complications using health care utilisation data.