Diabetes diagnosis from administrative claims and estimation of the true prevalence of diabetes among 4.2 million individuals of the Veneto region (North East Italy)

摘要

Background and aims: Diabetes can often remain undiagnosed or unregistered in administrative databases long after its onset, even when laboratory test results meet diagnostic criteria. In the present work, we analyse healthcare data of the Veneto Region, North East Italy, with the aims of: (i) developing an algorithm for the identification of diabetes from administrative claims (4,236,007 citizens), (ii) assessing its reliability by comparing its performance with the gold standard clinical diagnosis from a clinical database (7525 patients), (iii) combining the algorithm and the laboratory data of the regional Health Information Exchange (rHIE) system (543,520 subjects) to identify undiagnosed diabetes, and (iv) providing a credible estimate of the true prevalence of diabetes in Veneto.