Background: Coronary heart disease kills more than 7 million people worldwide each year. High levels of blood fat, cholesterol, contributes significantly to coronary heart disease. Lifestyle changes combined with lipid-lowering drugs, Statins, is an effective treatment. But adherence to Statins is low, not even a myocardial infarction always contributes to adherence. Adherence requires patient education and good communication between patient and physician.

There has been an increasing interest for ranking of Swedish health care and a lot of emphasis has been placed on the creation of indicators in order to rank hospital units. However, essays on to what extent the choice of statistical method affects the final result of the ranking of health care units have not been given the same attention. For this particular reason, the main objective of this essay has been to investigate whether the choice of statistical model has a significant impact or not on the final result, by using five different, more or less common, statistical approaches: bar charts (with and without confidence intervals), control charts, logistic regression, multi-level analysis using shrunken residuals. The analyzed material in the essay comprises 24119 patients that all have been prescribed some form of the lipid-reducing medicine Statin. According to directives given by Region Skåne, doctors are encouraged to prescribe a particular type of Statin medicine, namely SimvaStatin, which has been proved to be equally effective, but significantly cheaper than other Statin medicines.

Bakgrund: Av de kroniska sjukdomarna i världen orsakar hjärt-kärlsjukdomarna 17,5 miljoner dödsfall per år. Läkemedel som används för prevention mot hjärt-kärlsjukdomar är bl.a. Statiner. Enligt Socialstyrelsen hämtade 455 716 patienter ut läkemedel från läkemedelsgruppen Statiner från apoteken år 2011. Mellan åren 1988-2012 har Swedis (biverkningsdatabas) fått inrapporterat 24 biverkningsrapporter relaterat till Statiner och neurologiska biverkningar som berör syftet i studien (perifer neuropati, polyneuropati, neuropati).