Talk to the Veterans Crisis Line now
U.S. flag
An official website of the United States government

VA Health Systems Research

Go to the VA ORD website
Go to the QUERI website

HSR&D Citation Abstract

Search | Search by Center | Search by Source | Keywords in Title

Accuracy of computerized outpatient diagnoses in a Veterans Affairs general medicine clinic.

Szeto HC, Coleman RK, Gholami P, Hoffman BB, Goldstein MK. Accuracy of computerized outpatient diagnoses in a Veterans Affairs general medicine clinic. The American journal of managed care. 2002 Jan 1; 8(1):37-43.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.
   Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions



Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Electronically available data, both administrative, such as outpatient encounter diagnostic data, and clinical, such as problem lists, are being used increasingly for outcome and quality assessment, risk adjustment, and clinical reminder systems. OBJECTIVE: To determine the accuracy of outpatient primary care diagnostic information recorded in administrative and clinical files in a Veterans Affairs VISTA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) database compared with medical chart notes. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional medical chart review of 148 patients attending a general medicine clinic at a university-affiliated Veterans Affairs hospital for 9 diagnoses relevant to the choice of drug therapy for hypertension. PATIENTS AND METHODS: An administrative file of encounter diagnoses, for a 2-year period, and a clinical file of the problem list maintained by the clinician were the sources of electronic diagnoses. We compared these sources with diagnoses abstracted by medical chart review. We estimated the sensitivity and specificity of each electronic data source for detecting medical chart note diagnoses. RESULTS: The sensitivity for 8 of the 9 study diagnoses was greater than 80% in the administrative file and 49% in the clinical problem list. The specificity was good for the administrative file (91% to 100%) and even better for the clinical file (98% to 100%). CONCLUSIONS: Outpatient encounter diagnoses relevant to hypertension recorded as electronic data had high specificity, and some codes had high sensitivity when collected over multiple visits. The administrative file was more sensitive but less specific than the clinical file. Administrative vs clinical files can be selected to minimize either the false-negative or the false-positive designations, respectively, as dictated by the needs of the quality assessment review.





Questions about the HSR website? Email the Web Team

Any health information on this website is strictly for informational purposes and is not intended as medical advice. It should not be used to diagnose or treat any condition.