A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm
<|reference_start|>A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm: Objective: Freely preprocess drug codes recorded in electronic health records and insurance claims to drug classes that may then be used in biomedical research.   Materials and Methods: We developed a drug classification pipeline for linking National Drug Codes to the World Health Organization Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification. To implement our solution, we created an R package interface to the National Library of Medicine's RxNorm API.   Results: Using the classification pipeline, 59.4% of all unique NDC were linked to an ATC, resulting in 95.5% of all claims being successfully linked to a drug classification. We identified 12,004 unique NDC codes that were classified as being an opioid or non-opioid prescription for treating pain.   Discussion: Our proposed pipeline performed similarly well to other NDC classification routines using commercial databases. A check of a small, random sample of non-active NDC found the pipeline to be accurate for classifying these codes.   Conclusion: The RxNorm NDC classification pipeline is a practical and reliable tool for categorizing drugs in large-scale administrative claims data.<|reference_end|>
@article{williams2024a,
    title={A drug classification pipeline for Medicaid claims using RxNorm},
    author={Nicholas Williams and Kara E. Rudolph},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.01514},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2404.01514},
    primaryClass={q-bio.QM cs.DB}
}