Question

I have the following query

select * from 
(
        SELECT distinct 
        rx.patid
       ,rx.fillDate
       ,rx.scriptEndDate
       ,MAX(datediff(day, rx.filldate, rx.scriptenddate)) AS longestScript
       ,rx.drugClass
       ,COUNT(rx.drugName) over(partition by rx.patid,rx.fillDate,rx.drugclass) as distinctFamilies
       FROM [I 3 SCI control].dbo.rx
       where rx.drugClass in ('h3a','h6h','h4b','h2f','h2s','j7c','h2e')
       GROUP BY rx.patid, rx.fillDate, rx.scriptEndDate,rx.drugName,rx.drugClass
      
) r
order by distinctFamilies desc

which produces results that look like

This should mean that between the two dates in the table the patID that there should be 5 unique drug names. However, when I run the following query:

select distinct *
    from rx 
    where patid = 1358801781 and fillDate between '2008-10-17' and '2008-11-16' and drugClass='H4B'

I have a result set returned that looks like

You can see that while there are in fact five rows returned for the second query between the dates of 2008-10-17 and 2009-01-15, there are only three unique names. I’ve tried various ways of modifying the over clause, all with different levels of non-success. How can I alter my query so that I only find unique drugNames within the timeframe specified for each row?

Answer 1

Taking a shot at it:

   SELECT DISTINCT
  patid, 
  fillDate, 
  scriptEndDate, 
  MAX(DATEDIFF(day, fillDate, scriptEndDate)) AS longestScript,
  drugClass,
  MAX(rn) OVER(PARTITION BY patid, fillDate, drugClass) as distinctFamilies
FROM (
  SELECT patid, fillDate, scriptEndDate, drugClass,rx.drugName,
  DENSE_RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY patid, fillDate, drugClass ORDER BY drugName) as rn
  FROM [I 3 SCI control].dbo.rx
  WHERE drugClass IN ('h3a','h6h','h4b','h2f','h2s','j7c','h2e')
)x
GROUP BY x.patid, x.fillDate, x.scriptEndDate,x.drugName,x.drugClass,x.rn
ORDER BY distinctFamilies DESC

Not sure if DISTINCT is really necessary – left it in since you’ve used it.