Abstract
National Drug Codes (NDC) is a drug identification code that is widely used to identify each unique commercially available drug product in the computerized health care industry. Various NDC database systems are currently used for the drug claims process, inventory control, and drug utilization review in the industry. Using a relational database, comparison and analysis were performed among eight major NDC database sources from the Food and Drug Administration, the Health Care Financing Administration, Medicaid, Redbook®, Medi-Span®, First DataBank®, Bergen Brunswig-Durr Fillauer®, and the Department of Veteran Affairs pharmaceutical information systems. A large discrepancy of comparability among those major NDC database sources was found with the percentage of matched rates ranging from 29.8–99.3%. The study suggests that a public central repository of a completed NDC database system is needed as a standard NDC reference for the health care industry in order to improve the comparability, accessibility, and quality of drug information.
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