Comparison of the National VA Outpatient Database to Electronic Medical Records Technical rept. no. 8

摘要

This technical report compares two sources of information on ambulatory care provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). We compared the VA electronic medical record to the VA national outpatient utilization database. We wished to validate data to be used in the economic component of the Multisite Opioid Substitution Treatment (MOST) study. The MOST study is evaluating the effect of adherence to clinical practice guidelines on the cost and outcomes of patients being treated for opiate dependence at seven sites. We looked at a random sample of ambulatory care data for a small sample of patients. We compared the VA medical record, VISTA, to the outpatient events file, a SAS extract of the National Patient Care Database (NPCD).