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Cost effectiveness of hospital discharge records for reaching selected endpoints in the surveillance of silicosis
Author(s) -
Geidenberger Connie A.,
Nestel Gilbert,
Socie Edward M.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0274(199901)35:1<99::aid-ajim15>3.0.co;2-h
Subject(s) - medicine , paragraph , residence , work (physics) , sentence , medical emergency , silicosis , phone , actuarial science , demography , law , business , pathology , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , sociology , political science , engineering
Connie A. Geidenberger, Ph.D., 1 Gilbert Nestel, M.S., 1 and Edward M. Socie, M.S. 2 On page 490, a sentence was incorrectly printed to read “was not necessary . . .” The paragraph is reprinted below with the corrected sentence in boldface. This finding can be explained largely by source differences in available information necessary for case and work site follow‐up, in addition to differences in age, time since diagnosis, and time since employment of cases. The information contained in hospital discharge records was least likely of all the data sources to provide any information of place of employment or occupation. In contrast, the reporting form filed by physicians was designed to solicit pertinent information regarding both the case and the work site. Workers' compensation claims almost always contained identifiers of the work site as part of their administrative purpose. Finally, while often not informative, death certificates generally listed occupation and employer. Thus, almost without exception, case follow‐up was necessary to identify work sites associated with hospital cases, whereas work sites could more frequently be identified from the other sources in the event that case follow‐up was not successful. Given that hospital discharge records provided the vast majority of case reports, and that up‐to‐date information on case residence and phone number were often unavailable for cases reported by this source, considerable resources were devoted to attempts at case follow‐up that ultimately led nowhere.