Causal Analyses of Electronic Health Record Data for Assessing the Comparative Effectiveness of Treatment Regimens [Methods Study], United States, 2014-2019

Patients with chronic health problems, such as diabetes, often need to change treatment plans over time to improve their health. To help with this process, doctors can monitor patients' health through follow-up clinic visits and lab tests. Doctors may also suggest changing a treatment plan in response to visits or lab test results. When a treatment plan changes in this way, it's called a dynamic treatment plan. In this study, the research team developed and tested new statistical methods to learn how dynamic treatment plans and choices about follow-up care affect patients' health. These methods use electronic health records, or EHRs. Using EHRs is helpful because they have data on What treatments patients have received over time How treatments have affected patients' health Follow-up information such as lab test results But the data may differ for patients based on when and why they go to the doctor. These differences make it hard for researchers to accurately know the effect of dynamic treatment plans across many patients. To access the methods and software, please visit the simcasual R Package.