Carroll 2006

Methods	ITS with monthly data points and no transition period
Participants	Fee‐for‐service (FFS) plan members in Missouri Medicaid program n=42,262
Interventions	Automated PA program for COX‐2 inhibitors
Outcomes	Drug costs ‐ figure
Notes	Baseline period was 12 months immediately preceding intervention and post intervention period was 12 months after date of implementation. Controlled Before After (CBA) analysis did not meet selection criteria and therefore drug use data was not included.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Any undocumented difference in the proportion of missing data in the administrative datasets pre‐ and post‐intervention is unlikely to overturn study results
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All use and cost outcomes from methods section reported in findings
Other bias	Low risk	No bias detected that pertained to the ITS data presented in figure
Knowledge of allocated interventions adequately prevented during the study	Low risk	Outcomes are objective measures of health care utilization
Intervention independent of other changes	Low risk	Known and unknown changes in the environment are unlikely to be responsible for sudden change and magnitude of effect size
The shape of intervention pre‐specified?	Low risk	The point of analysis is the point of intervention; ie, the date the policy intervention was implemented was used to delineate pre and post policy time periods with adequate data points to capture the shape of the pattern of intervention effect over time (time series data provided).
Intervention unlikely to affect data collection?	High risk	Intervention aimed at better implementation through better data collection at the point of sale source.