Health services research and data linkages: issues, methods, and directions for the future.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Research on pressing health services and policy issues requires access to complete, accurate, and timely patient and organizational data.

Aim

This paper describes how administrative and health records (including electronic medical records) can be linked for comparative effectiveness and health services research.

Materials and methods

We categorize the major agents (i.e., who owns and controls data and who carries out the data linkage) into three areas: (1) individual investigators; (2) government sponsored linked data bases; and (3) public-private partnerships that facilitate linkage of data owned by private organizations. We describe challenges that may be encountered in the linkage process, and the benefits of combining secondary databases with primary qu

SUBMITTER: Bradley CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2965887 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature