Background: The objective of this work was to analyse the concordance in the registry of dementia among the main sources of clinical information, with the aim of determining their usefulness for epidemiological and clinical research.
Methods: Descriptive study of patients assigned to the Aragon Health Service in 2010 (n=1,344,891).
Databases used: (i)the pharmacy billing database (n=9,392); (ii)Primary Care electronic health records (EHR) (n=9,471), and (iii)the hospital minimum basic data set (n=3,289). When studying the concordance of the databases, the group of patients with a specific treatment for dementia (i.e., acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and/or memantine) was taken as the reference.
Results: The diagnosis in Primary Care was missing for 47.3% of patients taking anti-dementia drugs. The same occurred with 38.3% of dementia patients admitted to hospital during the study year. Among patients with a diagnosis of dementia in the EHR, only half (52.3%) was under treatment for this condition. This percentage decreased to 34.4% in patients with the diagnosis registered in the hospital database.
Conclusions: The weak concordance in the registry of the dementia diagnosis between the main health information systems makes their use and analysis more complex, and supports the need to include all available health data sources in order to gain a global picture of the epidemiological and clinical reality of this health condition.
Keywords: Demencia; Dementia; Electronic health record; Health information systems; Historia clínica electrónica; Sistemas de información sanitaria.
Copyright © 2015 SEGG. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.