Grant: Operating Grant

All provincial governments collect information on drugs reimbursed through the provincial drug insurance plan. There is increasing use of this data to study the safety and effectiveness of drugs. These studies rely on accurate drug data in the databases in order to provide meaningful results. Most provinces only collect drug information if the drug is partially or fully covered under the provincial drug insurance plan. These drug policies that limit the insurance coverage of drugs affect not only patients but also researchers who use provincial prescription databases to study drug effects. We aim to study the effects of specific drug policies which affect a number of drugs used by Canadians including those to treat diabetes, heart disease, and stomach disorders. All of these drugs are subject to a specific type of drug policy, which requires people to meet specific criteria before the drug will be covered by the insurance plan. Many people do not meet these "criteria" and have to rely on private insurance or "pay out of pocket" to acquire the drug. As a result, since the provincial insurance plan is not paying for the drug, most do not record the use of the drug within their insurance databases. This creates inaccurate drug information and may cause results from studies to be misleading. In Saskatchewan, two databases exist - one that records all drugs used in the province and a second database that only collects drugs that are covered by the insurance plan. As a result, using these databases (the insurance databases vs the complete databases), we will test whether the missing information in the provincial drug insurance databases has the potential to altered and mislead study results. This study will inform those who conduct drug research studies using provincial health care databases of the impact of specific drug coverage policies on the accuracy of their study results.