Variation in Laboratory Test Naming Conventions in EHRs Within and Between Hospitals: A Nationwide Longitudinal Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Electronic health records provide clinically rich data for research and quality improvement work. However, the data are often unstructured text, may be inconsistently recorded and extracted into centralized databases, making them difficult to use for research.

Objectives

We sought to quantify the variation in how key laboratory measures are recorded in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) across hospitals and over time. We included 6 laboratory tests commonly drawn within the first 24 hours of hospital admission (albumin, bilirubin, creatinine, hemoglobin, sodium, white blood cell count) from fiscal years 2005-2015.

Results

We assessed laboratory test capture for 5,454,411 acute hospital admissions at 121 sites across the V

SUBMITTER: Wiitala WL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6417968 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature