Opportunities, Pitfalls, and Alternatives in Adapting Electronic Health Records for Health Services Research.

ABSTRACT: Electronic health records (EHRs) offer the potential to study large numbers of patients but are designed for clinical practice, not research. Despite the increasing availability of EHR data, their use in research comes with its own set of challenges. In this article, we describe some important considerations and potential solutions for commonly encountered problems when working with large-scale, EHR-derived data for health services and community-relevant health research. Specifically, using EHR data requires the researcher to define the relevant patient subpopulation, reliably identify the primary care provider, recognize the EHR as containing episodic (i.e., unstructured longitudinal) data, account for changes in health system composition and treatment options over time, understand that t

SUBMITTER: Taksler GB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7878193 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature