Creating a Powerful Platform to Explore Health in a Correctional Population: A Record Linkage Study

Kathryn E McIsaac; Shanna Farrell MacDonald; Nelson Chong; Andrea Moser; Rahim Moineddin; Angela Colantonio; Avery Nathens; Flora I Matheson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0161173

Creating a Powerful Platform to Explore Health in a Correctional Population: A Record Linkage Study

PLoS One. 2016 Aug 17;11(8):e0161173. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161173. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Kathryn E McIsaac^{1

2}, Shanna Farrell MacDonald³, Nelson Chong⁴, Andrea Moser³, Rahim Moineddin^{1

4

5}, Angela Colantonio^{1

4

6

7}, Avery Nathens^{4

8}, Flora I Matheson^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
² Centre for Urban Health Solutions, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
³ Correctional Service Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
⁴ Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁵ Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁶ Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁷ Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁸ Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Abstract

We used record linkage to create a data repository of health information of persons who were federally incarcerated in Ontario and Canada. We obtained records from 56,867 adults who were federally incarcerated between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2011 from the Correctional Service of Canada; 15,248 records belonged to individuals residing in Ontario, Canada. We linked these records to the Registered Persons Database (RPDB) which contained records from 18,116,996 individuals eligible for health care in Ontario. Out of 56,867 OMS records, 22,844 (40.2%) were linked to the RPDB. Looking only at those incarcerated in Ontario, 98%, (14 953 of 15248) records were linked to RPDB. Most records of persons in Ontario-based facilities were linked deterministically. Linkage rates were lower for women, minority groups, and substance users. In conclusion, record linkage enabled the creation of a valuable data repository: there are no electronic medical records for correctional populations in Canada, making it more difficult to profile their health.

MeSH terms

Adult
Databases, Factual*
Female
Health Records, Personal*
Health Status*
Humans
Male
Medical Record Linkage / methods*
Middle Aged
Ontario
Prisoners / statistics & numerical data*
Prisons

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), which is funded by an annual grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) and also supported by the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. This research is also supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant (#890-2011-0027). Dr. McIsaac is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategic Training Fellow in the ACHIEVE Research Partnership: Action for Health Equity Interventions (#96566). Dr. Colantonio received support through a Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Gender and Health (#CGW-126-580). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.