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pubmed:abstractText |
Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic, and costly illness that adversely impacts patients' lives and health care payer budgets. Cost comparisons of treatment regimens are, therefore, important to health care payers and researchers. Pre-Post analyses ("mirror-image"), where outcomes prior to a medication switch are compared to outcomes post-switch, are commonly used in such research. However, medication changes often occur during a costly crisis event. Patients may relapse, be hospitalized, have a medication change, and then spend a period of time with intense use of costly resources (post-medication switch). While many advantages and disadvantages of Pre-Post methodology have been discussed, issues regarding the attributability of costs incurred around the time of medication switching have not been fully investigated.
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