Agreement Between 2 Sources of Antipsychotic Coding Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Long-Term Care

It is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessment completion in long-term care (LTC) facilities. We sought to evaluate data quality of the antipsychotic medication item recorded in the MDS assessment generally, and to understand change during the COVID-19 pandemic. We chose to examine antipsychotics, as opposed to other coded drug classes in the assessment, because antipsychotic usage rates in LTC facilities are publicly reported indicators in the United States and Canada, using data from each country's version of the MDS,1,2 and because higher use of antipsychotics has been reported as a result of the pandemic.