Open AccessComparison of registry and government evaluation data to ascertain severe trauma cases in Japan
Author(s) -
Nakahara Shinji,
Sakamoto Tetsuya,
Fujita Takashi,
Koyama Tomohide,
Katayama Yoichi,
Tanabe Seizan,
Yamamoto Yasuhiro
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
acute medicine and surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2052-8817
DOI - 10.1002/ams2.302
Subject(s) - medicine , case fatality rate , concordance , data quality , data collection , emergency medicine , data source , medical emergency , epidemiology , statistics , data mining , operations management , metric (unit) , mathematics , computer science , economics
Aims Accurate evaluation of health care quality requires high‐quality data, and case ascertainment (confirming eligible cases and deaths) is a foundation for accurate data collection. This study examined the accuracy of case ascertainment from two Japanese data sources. Methods Using hospital‐level data, we investigated the concordance in ascertaining trauma cases between a nationwide trauma registry (the Japan Trauma Data Bank) and annual government evaluations of tertiary hospitals between April 2012 and March 2013. We compared the median values for trauma case volumes, numbers of deaths, and case fatality rates from both data sources, and also evaluated the variability in discrepancies for the intrahospital differences of these outcomes. Results The analyses included 136 hospitals. In the registry and annual evaluation data, the median case volumes were 120.5 cases and 180.5 cases, respectively; the median numbers of deaths were 11 and 12, respectively; and the median case fatality rates were 8.1% and 6.4%, respectively. There was broad variability in the intrahospital differences in these outcomes. Conclusions The observed discordance between the two data sources implies that these data sources may have inaccuracies in case ascertainment. Measures are needed to evaluate and improve the accuracy of data from these sources.