Concept: Smoking Cessation Prescriptions

Introduction

This concept contains information on smoking cessation prescriptions, including the methods used at MCHP to identify smoking cessation prescriptions in administrative data and links to specific MCHP research where smoking cessation prescription rates are reported.

Defining Smokers and Smoking Cessation Prescriptions

In Katz et al. (2014), they used the following methods to define and identify smokers and smoking cessation medications:


• smokers were identified using the variable patient_smoker = 1 (yes) from the Physician Integrated Network (PIN) data.
  
  
• patients aged 18+ who received a prescription for smoking cessation drugs (e.g.: bupropion and varenicline) at least once in time period. Smoking cessation drugs are defined by the following drug identification numbers:

  '02237823', '02237824', '02237825', '02238441', '02260239', '02275074', '02275082', '02275090', '02275104', '02285657', '02285665', '02291177', '02291185', '02298309', '02313421', '02325357', '02325373', '02331616', '02363399', '02363402', '02391562', '02391570'

• exclude patients who use bupropion for the treatment of depression - therefore patients who have a previous diagnosis of mood/anxiety disorder (up to 5 years prior) will be excluded.

Smoking Cessation Prescription in MCHP Research

The following list identifies MCHP research that has investigated smoking cessation prescriptions:


• In Katz et al. (2014), they compare smoking cessation prescription rates for pre- and post-implementation of the Physician Integrated Network (PIN) clinics. See the section titled Smoking Cessation Prescriptions for more information.