Full Length ArticleDevelopment of a risk assessment tool for osteoporotic fracture prevention: A claims data approach
Introduction
Osteoporotic fractures represent a major health problem in aging societies, placing high health and economic burden on the individual and the public health system [1]. Osteoporotic fractures are associated with a loss of quality of life, a decrease in functional mobility, and an increase in mortality [[2], [3], [4], [5], [6]]. In developed countries the lifetime risk for osteoporotic fractures at fracture sites including hip, spine, and wrist has been estimated to amount to 30%–40% [7]. With the rapid rise in the number of older people osteoporotic fractures may become a prime future health concern as these fractures have been shown to correlate strongly with age [[8], [9], [10], [11]]. Findings for Germany indicate an increase in the total number of incident osteoporotic fractures by 238% between 2010 and 2050 if fracture rates remain constant. Unsurprisingly, total direct costs of incident osteoporotic fractures are projected to rise to 3.2 billion Euros in 2030 from approximately 898 million Euros in 2010 [12]. Therefore, preventive measures to reduce the risk of fractures are crucial; but such measures can be very expensive, adding to costs.
Various national and international fracture risk assessment tools exist to identify persons at increased risk of osteoporotic fractures. FRAX® [13], adapted in several countries, is probably the most prominent tool besides QFracture [14] that includes more risk factors and in greater detail. On national level there is the tool developed by the German Osteology organization (German DVO-Tool, [15]). These tools aim at assisting clinicians in the management of their patients through calculation of 5-year or 10-year fracture risk. To estimate individual fracture risk, these tools involve direct patient assessment and information about their risk factors. However, identifying potential persons for risk assessment may strongly depend on the physician's knowledge about the existence of available risk models, the physician's time budget, and patients' willingness to participate. A risk assessment tool based on readily available data may overcome such obstacles and could be used to identify persons at risk by an automatized algorithm. Such a case finding strategy would enable health care funds to offer their insured persons specific measures to improve bone health and reduce fall risk. Hence, the objective of this study was to develop a fracture risk assessment tool based on claims data that may be directly performed on health institutional and supplier level.
Section snippets
Study population and data source
The study was based on data provided by the German social insurance for agriculture, forestry and horticulture (Sozialversicherung für Landwirtschaft, Forsten und Gartenbau, SVLFG). The SVLFG is responsible for carrying out the agricultural accident insurance, the old-age provisions for farmers, the agricultural health insurance and the agricultural long-term care insurance. The extensive dataset contained data from 2006 through 2014. Information on age, gender, date and reason for termination
Results
Table 1 presents the descriptive characteristics of the derivation, the validation, and the entire study cohort. The entire study cohort (298,530 individuals) had a mean age of 75.43 years (SD 6.28) (at index date) and slightly less than half were women (48.78%). A prior major fracture within the 2 years preceding index date was recorded for 1.60% of the cohort. A total of 7864 MOF occurred during the 2 years follow-up and the median time to the first major fracture during follow-up was 371.5 days
Discussion
In this study we developed a risk assessment model for fracture prediction based on claims data that can be used for recommendations for preventive measures. We chose to follow a pragmatic approach considering risk factors that can be easily and reliably retrieved from claims databases and implemented in routine health care.
Several risk factors were identified to be associated with fracture risk for common osteoporotic fractures sites (i.e., hip, spine, forearm, humerus [17,18]). We found a
Conclusion
In summary, we developed a risk score to predict osteoporotic fracture risk in an elderly population. The score is based on a large administrative claims dataset and can be readily used by decision-making bodies at the institutional level or when self-reported patient information is not accessible. The discrimination statistics suggest that a model including drug-related risk factors improves predictive accuracy, but a simple model with age, gender and prior fracture may be used without
Ethical approval
Anonymised data were obtained by the insurance company. Insurants were not contacted personally for informed consent. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Ulm University.
Funding
The study was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. 01EC1404D).
Conflicts of interest
Katrin Reber (KCR), Ivonne Lindlbauer (IL), Kilian Rapp (KR), Clemens Becker (CB), Gisela Büchele (GB), Sarah Mächler (SM), and Hans-Helmut König (HHK) declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Author contributorship
KCR, IL, KR, CB, GB and HHK planned the study. KCR, IL, KR, SM and HHK developed methodological approach. KCR, IL conducted statistical analyses. KCR wrote the manuscript. All authors participated in editing and revising the drafted version of the manuscript.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank the SVLFG and especially Daniel Stöger and Andrea Grunz from the SVLFG for granting access to the data and data support. The authors also wish to thank Andreas Meid from the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology, University of Heidelberg for helpful advice and support of our analyses.
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