Background Statins conclusively decrease mortality in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), the leading cause of death worldwide, and are strongly recommended by guidelines. However, real-world statin utilization and persistence are low, resulting in excess mortality. Identifying reasons for statin nonuse at scale across health systems is crucial to developing targeted interventions to improve statin use. Methods We developed and validated deep learning-based natural language processing (NLP) approaches (Clinical Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers [BERT]) to classify statin nonuse and reasons for statin nonuse using unstructured electronic health records (EHRs) from a diverse healthcare system. Results We present data from a cohort of 56,530 ASCVD patients, among whom 21,508 (38%) lack guideline-directed statin prescriptions and statins listed as allergies in structured EHR portions. Of these 21,508 patients without prescriptions, only 3,929 (18%) have any discussion of statin use or nonuse in EHR documentation. The NLP classifiers identify statin nonuse with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.94 (95% CI 0.93–0.96) and reasons for nonuse with a weighted-average AUC of 0.88 (95% CI 0.86–0.91) when evaluated against manual expert chart review in a held-out test set. Clinical BERT identifies key patient-level reasons (side-effects, patient preference) and clinician-level reasons (guideline-discordant practices) for statin nonuse, including differences by type of ASCVD and patient race/ethnicity. Conclusions Our deep learning NLP classifiers can identify crucial gaps in statin nonuse and reasons for nonuse in high-risk populations to support education, clinical decision support, and potential pathways for health systems to address ASCVD treatment gaps.

ObjectiveThe opioid crisis brought scrutiny to opioid prescribing. Understanding how opioid prescribing patterns and corresponding patient outcomes changed during the epidemic is essential for future targeted policies. Many studies attempt to model trends in opioid prescriptions therefore understanding the temporal shift in opioid prescribing patterns across populations is necessary. This study characterized postoperative opioid prescribing patterns across different populations, 2010–2020.Data SourceAdministrative data from Veteran Health Administration (VHA), six Medicaid state programs and an Academic Medical Center (AMC).Data extractionSurgeries were identified using the Clinical Classifications Software.Study DesignTrends in average daily discharge Morphine Milligram Equivalent (MME), postoperative pain and subsequent opioid prescription were compared using regression and likelihood ratio test statistics.Principal FindingsThe cohorts included 595,106 patients, with populations that varied considerably in demographics. Over the study period, MME decreased significantly at VHA (37.5–30.1; p = 0.002) and Medicaid (41.6–31.3; p = 0.019), and increased at AMC (36.9–41.7; p < 0.001). Persistent opioid users decreased after 2015 in VHA (p < 0.001) and Medicaid (p = 0.002) and increase at the AMC (p = 0.003), although a low rate was maintained. Average postoperative pain scores remained constant over the study period.ConclusionsVHA and Medicaid programs decreased opioid prescribing over the past decade, with differing response times and rates. In 2020, these systems achieved comparable opioid prescribing patterns and outcomes despite having very different populations. Acknowledging and incorporating these temporal distribution shifts into data learning models is essential for robust and generalizable models.

Background Statins are guideline‐recommended medications that reduce cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes. Yet, statin use is concerningly low in this high‐risk population. Identifying reasons for statin nonuse, which are typically described in unstructured electronic health record data, can inform targeted system interventions to improve statin use. We aimed to leverage a deep learning approach to identify reasons for statin nonuse in patients with diabetes. Methods and Results Adults with diabetes and no statin prescriptions were identified from a multiethnic, multisite Northern California electronic health record cohort from 2014 to 2020. We used a benchmark deep learning natural language processing approach (Clinical Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) to identify statin nonuse and reasons for statin nonuse from unstructured electronic health record data. Performance was evaluated against expert clinician review from manual annotation of clinical notes and compared with other natural language processing approaches. Of 33 461 patients with diabetes (mean age 59±15 years, 49% women, 36% White patients, 24% Asian patients, and 15% Hispanic patients), 47% (15 580) had no statin prescriptions. From unstructured data, Clinical Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers accurately identified statin nonuse (area under receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] 0.99 [0.98–1.0]) and key patient (eg, side effects/contraindications), clinician (eg, guideline‐discordant practice), and system reasons (eg, clinical inertia) for statin nonuse (AUC 0.90 [0.86–0.93]) and outperformed other natural language processing approaches. Reasons for nonuse varied by clinical and demographic characteristics, including race and ethnicity. Conclusions A deep learning algorithm identified statin nonuse and actionable reasons for statin nonuse in patients with diabetes. Findings may enable targeted interventions to improve guideline‐directed statin use and be scaled to other evidence‐based therapies.

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Introduction: Statins are life-saving medications for patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), but women with ASCVD are persistently less likely to be prescribed statins than men. This study aims to use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to further elucidate patient and provider factors contributing to this disparity. Methods: The study cohort included patients with >2 ASCVD encounters between 2014 and 2021 within a multisite electronic health record (EHR) in Northern California. Data from a random sample of our cohort (N = 942) was manually annotated to develop a benchmark deep learning natural language processing (NLP) approach, Clinical Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT); 80% of these were used for model training and 20% for testing. After reviewing structured EHR data (e.g. prescriptions, allergies), BERT was used to identify and interpret discussions of statins in clinical notes. Results: Of 88,913 patients with ASCVD (mean age 67.8 ± 13.1 years), 35,901 (40.4%) were women. Women were less likely to be prescribed statins (56.6% vs. 67.6%, p < 0.001). Only 18.6% of nonallergic patients without a statin prescription had a mention of statins in unstructured EHR text. Statin use through unstructured text was less likely to be identified among women than men (32.8% vs. 42.6%, p < 0.001). Reasons for statin nonuse did not significantly differ by gender (Figure). Conclusions: Women with ASCVD were less likely to be use statins, and this disparity became more pronounced with the inclusion of unstructured data. An NLP approach revealed actionable reasons for statin nonuse. Future studies should leverage these approaches to monitor and track statin adherence by combining structured and unstructured data in real-world populations.