Developing a standardised approach to the aggregation of inpatient episodes into person-based spells in all specialties and psychiatric specialties.

Background: Electronic health record (EHR) data are available for research in all UK nations and cross-nation comparative studies are becoming more common. All UK inpatient EHRs are based around episodes, but episode-based analysis may not sufficiently capture the patient journey. There is no UK-wid...

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Publicado en:BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making Vol. 19; no. 1
Autores principales: Rees, Sarah, Akbari, Ashley, Collins, Huw, Lee, Sze Chim, Marchant, Amanda, Rees, Arfon, Thayer, Daniel, Wang, Ting, Wood, Sophie, John, Ann
Formato: research Journal Article
Publicado: BioMed Central 11/29/2019
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: 11/29/2019
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      pub: BioMed Central
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        10.1186/s12911-019-0953-2
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        atl: Developing a standardised approach to the aggregation of inpatient episodes into person-based spells in all specialties and psychiatric specialties.
      aug:
        au:
          Rees, Sarah
          Akbari, Ashley
          Collins, Huw
          Lee, Sze Chim
          Marchant, Amanda
          Rees, Arfon
          Thayer, Daniel
          Wang, Ting
          Wood, Sophie
          John, Ann
        affil: SAIL Databank, Swansea University Medical School, SA2 8PP, Swansea, UK
      sug:
        subj:
          Transfer, Discharge Statistics and Numerical Data
          Patient Care
          Hospitalization
          Research, Medical
          Inpatients
          Medicine
          Male
          Information Retrieval
          Length of Stay
          Wales
          Female
          National Health Programs
          Human
          Validation Studies
          Comparative Studies
          Evaluation Research
          Multicenter Studies
          Ferrans and Powers Quality of Life Index
          Impact of Events Scale
          Male
          Female
      ab: Background: Electronic health record (EHR) data are available for research in all UK nations and cross-nation comparative studies are becoming more common. All UK inpatient EHRs are based around episodes, but episode-based analysis may not sufficiently capture the patient journey. There is no UK-wide method for aggregating episodes into standardised person-based spells. This study identifies two data quality issues affecting the creation of person-based spells, and tests four methods to create these spells, for implementation across all UK nations.Methods: Welsh inpatient EHRs from 2013 to 2017 were analysed. Phase one described two data quality issues; transfers of care and episode sequencing. Phase two compared four methods for creating person spells. Measures were mean length of stay (LOS, expressed in days) and number of episodes per person spell for each method.Results: 3.5% of total admissions were transfers-in and 3.1% of total discharges were transfers-out. 68.7% of total transfers-in and 48.7% of psychiatric transfers-in had an identifiable preceding transfer-out, and 78.2% of total transfers-out and 59.0% of psychiatric transfers-out had an identifiable subsequent transfer-in. 0.2% of total episodes and 4.0% of psychiatric episodes overlapped with at least one other episode of any specialty. Method one (no evidence of transfer required; overlapping episodes grouped together) resulted in the longest mean LOS (4.0 days for all specialties; 48.5 days for psychiatric specialties) and the fewest single episode person spells (82.4% of all specialties; 69.7% for psychiatric specialties). Method three (evidence of transfer required; overlapping episodes separated) resulted in the shortest mean LOS (3.7 days for all specialties; 45.8 days for psychiatric specialties) and the most single episode person spells; (86.9% for all specialties; 86.3% for psychiatric specialties).Conclusions: Transfers-in appear better recorded than transfers-out. Transfer coding is incomplete, particularly for psychiatric specialties. The proportion of episodes that overlap is small but psychiatric episodes are disproportionately affected. The most successful method for grouping episodes into person spells aggregated overlapping episodes and required no evidence of transfer from admission source/method or discharge destination codes. The least successful method treated overlapping episodes as distinct and required transfer coding. The impact of all four methods was greater for psychiatric specialties.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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