The Future of Social Network Analysis of Health Care System Data: Promise and Concerns

Excerpt

The study by Ong et al.1 reported in this issue of JGIM represents a major step forward toward improving our understanding of benzodiazepine prescribing and potential targets for improving benzodiazepine prescribing practices. The authors employed social network analysis to model select provider networks and relationships with benzodiazepine prescribing. Their study sought to answer the question, “Does care coordination diminish the chance of multiple-provider prescribing of benzodiazepines?” While this is a laudable study question, it is unclear whether the method employed adequately answers the question. The use of these types of approaches is still in a nascent stage. While these innovative approaches have considerable potential to leverage electronic health record data to improve our understanding of provider and patient networks of care, more research is needed to understand whether these approaches actually measure care coordination. …