DASH Guide:Anxiety Medication

These Census Tract-level datasets described here provide de-identified diagnosis data for customers of three managed care organizations in Allegheny County (Gateway Health Plan, Highmark Health, and UPMC) that have filed a claim for anxiety or depression medications in 2015. The data also includes the number of enrolled members in the three participating managed care organizations in 2015.

Definitions:

• Anxiety - An anxiety disorder is a common mental illness defined by feelings of uneasiness, worry and fear. While anxiety occurs for everyone sometimes, a person with ananxiety disorder feels an inappropriate amount of anxiety more often than is reasonable.
• Depression - Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.

What's Included in the Data:

Publicly Available

• Total insured in participating managed care organizations
• Total with medication claim by gender

Where to Find the Data:

• Anxiety Medication--Open Data on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Website
• Depression Medication--Open Data on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Website

Things to Know:

Due to the variability of diagnosis in relation to anxiety and depression, members of the DASH Partnership decided to standardize the reporting by the number of health plan participants with at least one disorder-related medication claim over the covered time period. Data as compiled here does not include individuals with a diagnosis that did not fill prescriptions.

• Due to the 90 day continuous enrolment criteria there is an opportunity for an individual to be counted twice in the data set. If an individual moved within the county to a different census tract during 2015 and lived in each for 90 days they would be captured in each. Similarly, if an individual switched to another DASH managed care organization during the 2015 year and had 90 continuous days in each, they would also be counted twice.
• The total number of members referenced in the data dictionary is based on de-identified, merged population data from Gateway Health Plan, Highmark Health, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. These members represent approximately 60% of the county’s insured population. The total estimate of insured people in Allegheny County used to calculate this statistic comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2015 American Community Survey.
• Users should be cautious of using administrative claims data as a measure of disease prevalence and interpreting trends over time, as data provided were collected for purposes other than surveillance. Limitations of these data include but are not limited to: misclassification, duplicate individuals, exclusion of individuals who did not seek care in past two years and those who are: uninsured, enrolled in plans not represented in the dataset, or were not enrolled in one of the represented plans for at least 90 days.