For the data example, we used Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) data that had been linked to Medicare claims data.[23 ] The SEER database is maintained by the National Cancer Institute and currently has data on demographic and tumor characteristics about incident cancer cases in approximately 25% of the United States. SEER data can be linked to Medicare claims to find additional information on treatment and comorbidities. Medicare covers almost all individuals over 65 years old in the SEER database. Fee-for-service claims from Medicare Part A and Part B provide a record of treatments obtained before and after cancer diagnosis.
We included cases over 66 years old diagnosed from 1995-2007 with surgically-treated early stage (localized) kidney cancer in the SEER-Medicare data. We restricted the sample to those over 66 years old so that individuals would have at least one year pre-diagnosis Medicare claims data. We chose a group with localized kidney cancer as such tumors are often slow growing, and many patients are likely to die from their comorbidities rather than the cancer itself.[24 (link)]
We coded the Charlson Comorbidity Index using an algorithm for claims data [23 ]. We used a similar algorithm to identify Elixhauser measures [25 ]. Since everyone in the sample had a kidney cancer diagnosis, cancer diagnosis was not used to calculate the scores. Also, the Elixhauser program does not calculate the cardiac arrhythmia indicator due to Dr. Elixhauser’s “concerns about reliability.”[25 ] To be considered a comorbidity and not a “rule-out” diagnosis, two Medicare claims at least 30 days apart had to be found in the one year period prior to kidney cancer diagnosis.
For comparison purposes, we examined the discriminative ability of using the Charlson and Elixhauser scores and the respective individual comorbidities in Cox proportional hazards regressions. In all models we included the following baseline characteristics: age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, diameter of the tumor, sex, race/ethnicity (five categories: Hispanic or non-Hispanic black, white, Asian, other), and marital status (married/not married). We used Harrell’s concordance index (C-index) to compare the two methods of incorporating comorbidities.[26 ] We examine the concordance statistic as it is often of interest to health service researchers. A C-index of 0.5 indicates that a model is not useful in predicting who will have longer survival among pairs of individuals, while a value of 1.0 indicates that the model has perfect discriminatory power.
We included cases over 66 years old diagnosed from 1995-2007 with surgically-treated early stage (localized) kidney cancer in the SEER-Medicare data. We restricted the sample to those over 66 years old so that individuals would have at least one year pre-diagnosis Medicare claims data. We chose a group with localized kidney cancer as such tumors are often slow growing, and many patients are likely to die from their comorbidities rather than the cancer itself.[24 (link)]
We coded the Charlson Comorbidity Index using an algorithm for claims data [23 ]. We used a similar algorithm to identify Elixhauser measures [25 ]. Since everyone in the sample had a kidney cancer diagnosis, cancer diagnosis was not used to calculate the scores. Also, the Elixhauser program does not calculate the cardiac arrhythmia indicator due to Dr. Elixhauser’s “concerns about reliability.”[25 ] To be considered a comorbidity and not a “rule-out” diagnosis, two Medicare claims at least 30 days apart had to be found in the one year period prior to kidney cancer diagnosis.
For comparison purposes, we examined the discriminative ability of using the Charlson and Elixhauser scores and the respective individual comorbidities in Cox proportional hazards regressions. In all models we included the following baseline characteristics: age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, diameter of the tumor, sex, race/ethnicity (five categories: Hispanic or non-Hispanic black, white, Asian, other), and marital status (married/not married). We used Harrell’s concordance index (C-index) to compare the two methods of incorporating comorbidities.[26 ] We examine the concordance statistic as it is often of interest to health service researchers. A C-index of 0.5 indicates that a model is not useful in predicting who will have longer survival among pairs of individuals, while a value of 1.0 indicates that the model has perfect discriminatory power.