Monitoring prescribing patterns using regression and electronic health records

Table 6 Comorbidities associated with which class of hypertension medication is prescribed

	A2Blocker	ACE	Beta_Blocker	Cal_Chan	Thiazide	Percent of patients
Asthma	0.018	−0.014	−0.043	0.009	0.030	15.2
Bestrophinopathy	0.391	−0.248	−0.081	−0.120	0.058	1.7
Cardiomyopathies	−0.013	0.029	0.079	−0.041	−0.054	3.1
Chronic kidney disease stage 5	−0.011	−0.030	0.068	0.061	−0.089	1.7
Congestive heart failure	0.012	0.073	0.416	−0.071	−0.429	5.7
Coronary heart disease	−0.023	−0.057	0.481	−0.091	−0.310	11.2
Diabetes mellitus	0.101	0.261	−0.042	−0.122	−0.197	45.7
Heart failure	0.003	−0.017	0.069	0.005	−0.060	2
Hypertension induced by pregnancy	−0.017	−0.037	0.044	0.047	−0.038	0.5
Ischemia	−0.006	−0.004	0.077	−0.013	−0.055	3.8
Kidney failure	−0.022	−0.121	0.161	0.200	−0.217	9.6
Renal insufficiency	−0.008	−0.038	0.056	0.058	−0.067	8.6
Tricuspid valve insufficiency	0.000	−0.001	0.004	0.001	−0.004	3.7

To interpret any coefficient, first pick a reference class from among the five classes of medications. Then subtract the coefficient for any comorbidity for the class of interest from the coefficient for that comorbidity for the reference category and exponentiate. This is the estimated factor by which the comorbidity increases the odds of being prescribed the class of interest as opposed to the reference class. Positive coefficients are colored green and negative coefficients red, and shaded darker if the absolute value of the coefficient is greater than 0.05

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