After discussion, the clinicians were worried that people who had received 5 or more prescriptions for an acute pain event (e.g. following an accident) would be classified as having a chronic pain condition. We, therefore, decided to adjust the Prodcode codelist implementation as follows:
- 5 or more prescriptions of prodcodes in a 12 month period.
- The length of time between the first and last prescription in the 12 month period should be >6 months. (This aligns with the definition of a chronic condition being one that lasts > 6 months).
There are two codelists to identify Painful Conditions:
- MULTIPLY_Prodcode_painful_conditions_analgesic.csv: Analgesics excluding migraine treatments
- MULTIPLY_Prodcode_painful_conditions_epilepsy.csv: Epilepsy drugs excluding benzodiazepenes
Codelists implementation: 5 or more analgesics prescriptions in last 12 months in the absence of an Epilepsy diagnostic code ever recorded.
After discussion, the clinicians were worried that people who had received 5 or more prescriptions for an acute episode of constipation would be classified as having a chronic constipation. We, therefore, decided to adjust the Prodcode codelist implementation as follows:
- 5 or more prescriptions of prodcodes in a 12 month period.
- The length of time between the first and last prescription in the 12 month period should be >6 months. (This aligns with the definition of a chronic condition being one that lasts > 6 months).
To identify Painful conditions and Constipation we used the codelists (medication codes) developed by Payne and colleagues and published on an online repository [1]. Those codelists and their implementation were revised by our research team.
- Cambridge Multimorbidity Scores. In: Primary Care Unit [Internet]. [cited 2 Dec 2020]. Available: https://www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/pcu/research/research-groups/crmh/cprd_cam/codelists/