Association Between Dual Use of Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part D Drug Benefits and Potentially Unsafe Prescribing

Joshua M Thorpe; Carolyn T Thorpe; Loren Schleiden; John Cashy; Ronald Carico; Walid F Gellad; Courtney Harold Van Houtven

doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.2788

Association Between Dual Use of Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part D Drug Benefits and Potentially Unsafe Prescribing

JAMA Intern Med. 2019 Nov 1;179(11):1584-1586. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.2788.

Authors

Joshua M Thorpe^{1

2}, Carolyn T Thorpe^{1

2}, Loren Schleiden^{1

3}, John Cashy⁴, Ronald Carico¹, Walid F Gellad^{1

5}, Courtney Harold Van Houtven^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
² Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC-Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
³ Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
⁴ Corporal Michael J. Crescenz Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
⁵ Division of General Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
⁶ Center Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation, Durham Veterans Affairs Health Care System Durham, North Carolina.
⁷ Department of Population Health Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.

Abstract

This observational study evaluates the association of dual prescribing for Veterans Affairs and Medicare Part D benefits with unsafe prescription exposure in a national cohort of older veterans.