New York, NY - April 21, 2016: Complementary sources of data can be used to paint a more complete picture of a patient's health trajectory than a single source. Significant recent investment in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) took place on the assumption of improved patient safety, research capacity, and cost savings. However, most of these health systems and health records are fragmented and do not share patient information. While fragmentation and incomplete clinical data in EHRs are recognized problems, almost no published data estimate their extent. This study compares information available in a typical EHR with data from insurance claims, focusing on diagnoses, visits, and hospital care for depression and bipolar disorder.
The results show that:
The study highlights the usefulness of complementing EHR-derived data with external sources of information.
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The paper "Missing clinical and behavioral health data in a large electronic health record (HER) system" is available at: http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/04/12/jamia.ocw021
Correspondence should be directed to:
Stephen B Soumerai, ScD
Professor, Department of Population Medicine
Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute
133 Brookline Ave, 6th Floor
Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, USA
Email: ssoumerai@hms.harvard.edu
Phone: 617.509.9942
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association