Health systems use quality measures to assess how well they deliver care to patients. These measures require accurate data. Health systems often do a manual medical chart review to get accurate data. To do a manual review, staff combine data from a number of patient health records. This process is expensive and takes time.
PCORI funded PCORnet® to make it easier to conduct research. PCORnet is made up of networks of health systems. These networks gather data from electronic health records and transform the data into a common format, called the Common Data Model, or CDM.
In this study, the research team wanted to learn if CDM data are as accurate as data from a manual medical chart review. The team compared how often data from manual chart reviews agreed with CDM data for three quality measures for health problems in children:
The percentage of patients with sickle cell anemia who received screenings to prevent stroke
The percentage of patients with two or more prescriptions for antipsychotics who received blood sugar and cholesterol tests
The proportion of visits for ear infections where children received antibiotic prescriptions that matched recommended care