Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: June 30, 2022

Present:   Justine Dee, Nancy Gell, Ben Littenberg, Jen Oshita, Adam Sprouse-Blum, Connie van Eeghen (6)

 1.             Warm Up: Grant budget crisis by order of $100K but Ben is here and ready

2.               Justine’s VHCURES Study “Physical therapy utilization for treatment of chronic low back pain conditions: Use of the Vermont Heath Care Uniform Reporting and Evaluation System” methods section

a.       Intro: big jump from LBP to claims and utilization – what is the gap in the literature; is it cost rather than utilization?  This is just cost to the insurer. What we have is claims paid.

                                                   i.      “Effective PT on HC utilization among patients with chronic LBP based on claims paid”

                                                 ii.      Is lowest cost the best care?  Is this about a threshold of PT visits that is ideal? And a max that does not provide further benefit?

b.       Methods:

                                                   i.      State the study design

                                                 ii.      State the eligibility criteria – Ben’s example provided

                                               iii.      Why a two year period of observation?  It varies greatly among patient experience. Two years is consistent with other studies. Add justification.

                                               iv.      Define “chronic” for the reader

                                                 v.      Consider a table or a graphic to present the unit of analysis and the concepts used to measure the hypothesis of claims paid for patient w and w/o PT

c.       Resources  

                                                   i.      From Adam: Vos T, Abajobir AA, Abate KH, et al. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 328 diseases and injuries for 195 countries, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet. 2017;390(10100):1211-1259.  Low back pain is the #1 cause of global disability.

3.                   Next week:  TBD

Recorded by: CvE