The effects of patient education programs on medication use among asthma and COPD patients: a propensity score matching with a difference-in-difference regression approach

Table 1 Baseline comparisons for main outcome variables

	Intervention		Control		p-values for mean difference test
	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	p-values for mean difference test
Physician services
Cost (average cost in dollars/year)	559	550	549	670	0.83
Prescription drug cost (average cost in dollars/year)
Asthma/COPD drugs	228	436	170	416	0.08
Asthma/COPD chronic management	149	354	110	335	0.13
Asthma/COPD acute drugs	62	104	50	115	0.18
Asthma drugs (unclassified)	17	123	10	65	0.23
Other drugs	841	1331	877	2789	0.86
Total drugs	1069	1490	1047	2840	0.92
Prescription drug dispensations (average count/year)
Asthma/COPD drugs	5.2	7.44	4.1	7.09	0.06
Asthma/COPD chronic management	2.0	4.59	1.4	3.84	0.06
Asthma/COPD acute drugs	2.9	3.82	2.5	4.24	0.18
Asthma drugs (unclassified)	0.27	1.38	0.20	1.07	0.41
Other drugs	19.6	24.67	17.8	25.81	0.36
Total drugs	24.8	27.23	21.9	27.84	0.18
Hospital services (average count/year)
Inpatient admission	0.10	0.36	0.08	0.35	0.63
Length of stay	0.59	2.44	0.39	2.46	0.29

Note: The mean shows the annual average for each variable. SD stands for standard deviations. The last column presents the p-values for the mean difference test between control and intervention groups. Costs for physician services and prescription drugs are measured in current dollars while drug dispensations and hospital services are measured in average annual counts of dispensations or encounters.

ISSN: 1472-6963