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Skills: Time series analysis, data manipulation, data visualization, data validation, linear regression, exploratory data analysis, qauntitative research, prediction, modelling.
Mediciad in the United States is a health insurance programme that covers the medical expense for the lower income individuals. One of the very common drugs covered by Medicaid is the antipshychotics, which are the treatment of the mental illnesses such as schizphrenia and bipolor disorder.
There are two types of anti-psychotics drugs: Typical and atypical. During the 1990s, the atypical drugs were the fairly new category. They were still protected by the patents and were much more expensive than the typcical ones. Consequently, the states were spending quite lot money, from a half to 6 million USD every year from 1990 to 2005, in the reimbursements of the atypical anti-psychotic drugs.
To limit the dramatic increase while not delisting the drugs, in April 2003, the West Virginia government implemented a programme that required the doctors to fill in an authorisation form before prescribing such drugs to the patients, aimed at creating a procedural barrier and an alert for the doctors to think twice before deciding to use these drugs.
In this project, we are going to analyse the impact of the compulsory fill-in the form policy on the anti-psychotic drugs usage. Did it really lead to a decrease, as planned, in the use of drugs? And what were to expect in the future after the policy intervention?