About the Project

A significant body of literature shows that practitioners' practices typically lag the scientific evidence by many years. It has been argued that the resulting sub-optimal care can be associated with increased costs, demonstrably in the case of inappropriately high use of high-cost medications, and potentially where such care may be associated with poorer outcomes, and thus lead to unnecessarily high use of high-cost services.

The current project was initiated primarily as a pilot study to assess the feasibility of using Medicaid and other administrative data to assess the impact of an educational intervention designed to normalize the prescribing practices of physicians found to be operating outside of accepted practice guidelines. A secondary purpose was to examine the relationship of outlying prescribing practices to other service uses and costs and to determine whether normalization of prescribing practice is associated with reduction in use of high-cost services. The project was funded under contract with Comprehensive NeuroScience, Inc. (CNS) with funding from AstraZenica Pharmaceuticals, LP and focused on prescriptions of anti-psychotic medications for adults with schizophrenia.

Despite experimentation with a number of corrective strategies, it was ultimately necessary to conclude that the pharmacy claims data for the period under examination lacked the necessary accuracy in a crucial field (provider ID) to support a rigorous evaluation of the intervention, the CNS Behavioral Healthcare Pharmacy Management program. Consequently, outside funding was not provided beyond the amount of $49,570 for the pilot phase. However, the secondary aims are minimally affected by the specific problem with the pharmacy data, and the project continues without outside support. The principal investigator is Gregory B. Teague, Ph.D.; Timothy L. Boaz, Ph.D. and Stephen Banks, Ph.D. are co-investigators.

Principal Investigator	Gregory Teague, PhD
Co-PI	Timothy Boaz, PhD
Dates	02/11/2005 - 02/10/2006