About the Authors

Jennifer M. Polinski

jpolinski@partners.org

Affiliations Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

William H. Shrank

Affiliations Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Haiden A. Huskamp

Affiliation Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Robert J. Glynn

Affiliations Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Joshua N. Liberman

Affiliation CVS Caremark, Hunt Valley, Maryland, United States of America

Sebastian Schneeweiss

Affiliations Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Competing Interests

JMP is a consultant to Buccaneer Computer Systems and Service, Inc, a contractor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Within the past 5 years, JMP's spouse was employed as an engineer by DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, and had Johnson & Johnson stock totaling < US$3100 in value. WHS is a consultant to United Healthcare, which has a Part D business, but his consulting is unrelated. WHS has received research funding from CVS Caremark, Aetna, and Express Scripts, which all have Part D business. RJG has worked on grants to the Brigham & Women's Hospital, his employer, from Astra Zeneca and Novartis related to the design, statistical monitoring, and analysis of clinical trials in the setting of cardiovascular drugs. RJG also signed a consulting agreement to give a one-time Grand Rounds talk on comparative effectiveness research methods at Merck. JNL was an employee of CVS Caremark at the time of the study. SS is a paid member of the Scientific Advisory Board of HealthCore and a consultant to World Health Information Science Consultants, LLC. SS is Principal Investigator of the Brigham and Women's Hospital DEcIDE Center on Comparative Effectiveness Research funded by AHRQ and the DEcIDE Methods Center. Within the past 5 years, SS was funded by an investigator-initiated grant from Pfizer, which has ended. Opinions expressed here are only those of the authors and not necessarily those of the agencies.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JMP WHS HAH RJG SS. Performed the experiments: JMP. Analyzed the data: JMP WHS HAH RJG JNL SS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JMP WHS JNL. Wrote the paper: JMP WHS HAH RJG JNL SS. ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: JMP WHS HAH RJG JNL SS. Agree with the manuscript's results and conclusions: JMP WHS HAH RJG JNL SS. Wrote the first draft of the paper: JMP.