Open AccessUsing Electronically Available Inpatient Hospital Data for Research
Author(s) -
Apte Mandar,
Neidell Matthew,
Yoko Furuya E.,
Caplan David,
Glied Sherry,
Larson Elaine
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
clinical and translational science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.303
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1752-8062
pISSN - 1752-8054
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-8062.2011.00353.x
Subject(s) - usable , health care , computer science , data quality , data science , data set , set (abstract data type) , process (computing) , quality (philosophy) , data collection , medical record , medicine , medical emergency , world wide web , operations management , metric (unit) , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , epistemology , artificial intelligence , economics , programming language , economic growth , operating system , radiology
Despite a push to create electronic health records and a plethora of healthcare data from disparate sources, there are no data from a single electronic source that provide a full picture of a patient’s hospital course. This paper describes a process to utilize electronically available inpatient hospital data for research. We linked several different sources of extracted data, including clinical, procedural, administrative, and accounting data, using patients’ medical record numbers to compile a cohesive, comprehensive account of patient encounters. Challenges encountered included (1) interacting with distinct administrative units to locate data elements; (2) finding a secure, central location to house the data; (3) appropriately defining health measures of interest; (4) obtaining and linking these data to create a usable format for conducting research; and (5) dealing with missing data. Although the resulting data set is incredibly rich and likely to prove useful for a wide range of clinical and comparative effectiveness research questions, there are multiple challenges associated with linking hospital data to improve the quality of patient care. Clin Trans Sci 2011; Volume 4: 338–345