Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (Propensity Score) using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
Application of regression-discontinuity analysis in pharmaceutical health services research
Ilene H Zuckerman1, Euni Lee, Anthony K Wutoh
1Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, School of Pharmacy, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Objective:
To demonstrate how a relatively underused design, regression-discontinuity (RD), can provide robust estimates of intervention effects when stronger designs are impossible to implement.
Data Sources/Study Setting:
Administrative claims from a Mid-Atlantic state Medicaid program were used to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational drug utilization review intervention.
Study Design:
Quasi-experimental design.
Data Collection/Extraction Methods:
A drug utilization review study was conducted to evaluate a letter intervention to physicians treating Medicaid children with potentially excessive use of short-acting beta(2)-agonist inhalers (SAB). The outcome measure is change in seasonally-adjusted SAB use 5 months pre- and postintervention. To determine if the intervention reduced monthly SAB utilization, results from an RD analysis are compared to findings from a pretest-posttest design using repeated-measure ANOVA.
Principal Findings:
Both analyses indicated that the intervention significantly reduced SAB use among the high users. Average monthly SAB use declined by 0.9 canisters per month (p<.001) according to the repeated-measure ANOVA and by 0.2 canisters per month (p<.001) from RD analysis.
Conclusions:
Regression-discontinuity design is a useful quasi-experimental methodology that has significant advantages in internal validity compared to other pre-post designs when assessing interventions in which subjects' assignment is based on cutoff scores for a critical variable.
Related Concept Videos
Analysis of Population Pharmacokinetic Data
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast, controlled...
Regression Toward the Mean
Model-Independent Approaches for Pharmacokinetic Data: Noncompartmental Analysis
One important characteristic of noncompartmental analyses is that drug exposure increases proportionally with increasing doses. This relationship...
Pharmacovigilance
This process, termed pharmacovigilance, aims to detect, evaluate, and minimize harmful effects related to medication use. The data collection for pharmacovigilance depends on spontaneous reporting systems, where healthcare professionals or patients voluntarily report suspected ADRs.
In some cases, there...
Measurement of Bioavailability: Pharmacodynamic Methods