Developing drug-use indicators with a computerized drug database and a personal computer software package

The use of a multihospital drug- and patient-database system, a personal computer (PC), and a standard PC software package to monitor drug-use indicators is described, and a five-step method for analyzing a set of data is presented. An integrated spread-sheet, database, and graphics program (Lotus 1-2-3), which is compatible with an IBM PC, can manipulate data obtained from a multihospital database system. To demonstrate the utility of this system, a previously published procedure for analyzing drug-use indicators (e.g., length of stay, drug cost per patient, number of drugs received) for patients in two diagnosis-related groups was repeated using the database and PC software. The records of patients in each DRG were randomly selected from the database. The following steps were applied to the data: (1) data (as a whole) were characterized statistically, (2) data were examined to identify subgroups of interest, (3) groups of data were characterized statistically and compared with each other, (4) the effect of changing the characteristics of one or more subgroups was predicted, and (5) the results of the data manipulations were presented in tables and graphs. A multihospital database can serve as a source for obtaining large quantities of hospital-specific data. These data can be manipulated and presented in tabular or graphic form on a personal computer and used by hospitals to monitor various drug-use indicators.