4.5 Article Proceedings Paper

RSV testing practice and positivity by patient demographics in the United States: integrated analyses of MarketScan and NREVSS databases

Journal

BMC INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Volume 22, Issue 1, Pages -

Publisher

BMC
DOI: 10.1186/s12879-022-07659-x

Keywords

RSV; Respiratory syncytial virus; Antigen test; PCR test; Viral culture; Antibody test; CDC's National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System; RSV epidemiology; RSV measurement; Automated healthcare data

Funding

  1. Merck Sharp Dohme Corp.

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This study aimed to describe testing practices and test positivity among a national sample of private health insurance enrollees in the US and illustrated the possible magnitude of misclassification when using national Surveillance Systems (NREVSS) to correct for RSV under ascertainment. The results showed that RSV-test positivity depends on the characteristics of patients for whom those tests were ordered, and using NREVSS positivity to correct for untested acute respiratory infections can lead to significant biases.
Background RSV-incidence estimates obtained from routinely-collected healthcare data (e.g., MarketScan) are commonly adjusted for under-reporting using test positivity reported in national Surveillance Systems (NREVSS). However, NREVSS lacks detail on patient-level characteristics and the validity of applying a single positivity estimate across diverse patient groups is uncertain. We aimed to describe testing practices and test positivity across subgroups of private health insurance enrollees in the US and illustrate the possible magnitude of misclassification when using NREVSS to correct for RSV under ascertainment. Methods Using billing records, we determined distributions of RSV-test claims and test positivity among a national sample of private insurance enrollees. Tests were considered positive if they coincided with an RSV-diagnosis. We illustrated the influence of positivity variation across sub-populations when accounting for untested acute respiratory infections. Results Most tests were for children (age 0-4: 65.8%) and outpatient encounters (78.3%). Test positivity varied across age (0-4: 19.8%, 5-17: 1.8%, adults: 0.7%), regions (7.6-16.1%), settings (inpatient 4.7%, outpatient 14.2%), and test indication (5.0-35.9%). When compared to age, setting or indication-specific positivity, bias due to using NREVSS positivity to correct for untested ARIs ranged from - 76% to 3556%. Conclusions RSV-test positivity depends on the characteristics of patients for whom those tests were ordered. NREVSS-based correction for RSV-under-ascertainment underestimates the true incidence among children and overestimate rates among adults. Demographic-specific detail on testing practice and positivity can improve the accuracy of RSV-incidence estimates.

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