A4-4: Do Projects Have Complete Data Capture for Their Study Populations?

摘要

Background/AimsInvestigators often assume that when patients are enrolled in a health plan, they have complete capture of utilization data from their health plan sources. This assumption may not always be true as patients have many incentives to choose care at multiple settings (convenience, price, residence, insurance type, drug coverage), which can give rise to missing data. Complete capture of medical data for population-based research is crucial to our ability to identify populations who have not had particular exposures or outcomes. In case-control designs, where the control group does not have a specified exposure, we measure this condition by absence of data. To address this problem, the VDW enrollment work group created a new enrollment variable, called “Outside_utilization”, designed to identify members suspected of incomplete capture of encounters or pharmacy fills. This work reports on a quality assurance analysis of the extent and nature of the data gaps at different sites.