Improving the Identification of Pregnancies in Claims Data: A Descriptive Analysis

In this request, we aimed to characterize pregnancy-related markers within Sentinel’s pregnancy algorithm. This analysis had two primary objectives:

1. To explore the feasibility of identifying orphan pregnancy markers observed in varying time periods prior to, between or after pregnancy episodes identified by Sentinel’s pregnancy algorithm.
2. To characterize two specific categories of non-prioritized markers within pregnancy episodes:
   • “Lower priority” pregnancy markers, which are present within a pregnancy episode but are not prioritized and used for pregnancy duration estimation.
   • “Invalid pregnancy markers”, which are also found within pregnancy episodes but, if used to estimate pregnancy duration, will result in pregnancy episodes that exceed the maximum pregnancy duration for a given pregnancy.

The study period includes data from October 1, 2015 to March 31, 2023. We ran this analysis against the Merative™ MarketScan® Research Databases on February 13, 2025.