Incidence- versus prevalence-based measures of inappropriate prescribing in the Veterans Health Administration.

Lund BC, Carrel M, Gellad WF, Chrischilles EA, Kaboli PJ. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2015;63:1601-1607.

This health system performance study ranked sites within the Veterans Affairs health system using two measures of potentially inappropriate prescribing in older veterans. Researchers found that sites ranked similarly when they used new potentially inappropriate medications to measure performance compared to when they used existing potentially inappropriate medications as the measure. These results suggest that measuring new potentially inappropriate prescriptions is a feasible strategy worthy of further study.