Benzodiazepine Use and Deprescribing Study

We will study how Medicare health insurance claims can capture medication deprescribing. Medication deprescribing is a way to reduce risk of serious health problems by carefully and systematically stopping use of medications where the harms outweigh the benefits. To do so, the healthcare provider (e.g., doctor, pharmacist) and patient review all of the patient's medications, prioritize medications for stopping, and gradually (and with careful monitoring) reduce or stop using those medications. Insurance claims capture prescription drug information on a large number of older adults over time and therefore, are ideal for studying medication use. However, they do not describe why a patient stopped using a medication, and there are many reasons a patient may stop (e.g., side effects, costs). The goal of our study is to see how well we can capture deprescribing using insurance claims data.