Calculation
There are two common methods used in calculating therapeutic inertia. For the following examples, consider that a patient has five visits with a health provider. In four of those visits, a condition is not controlled (such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol). In two of those visits, the provider made a change to the patient's treatment for the condition.
In Dr. Okonofua's original paper, this patient's therapeutic inertia is calculated as where h is the number of visits with an uncontrolled condition, c is the number of visits in which a change was made, and v is the total number of visits. Therefore, the patient's therapeutic inertia is .
An alternative, which avoids consideration of visits where the condition was already controlled and the provider should not be expected to make a treatment change, is . Using the above example, there are 2 changes and 4 visits with an uncontrolled condition. The therapeutic inertia is .
Read more about this topic: Therapeutic Inertia
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