How much can we trust electronic health record data?

Samuel T Savitz; Lucy A Savitz; Neil S Fleming; Nilay D Shah; Alan S Go

doi:10.1016/j.hjdsi.2020.100444

How much can we trust electronic health record data?

Healthc (Amst). 2020 Sep;8(3):100444. doi: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2020.100444. Epub 2020 Jul 8.

Authors

Samuel T Savitz¹, Lucy A Savitz², Neil S Fleming³, Nilay D Shah⁴, Alan S Go⁵

Affiliations

¹ Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, USA.
² Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, USA. Electronic address: Lucy.A.Savitz@kpchr.org.
³ Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, USA.
⁴ Division of Health Care Policy & Research, The Mayo Clinic, USA.
⁵ Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, USA; Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, USA; Departments of Medicine, Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.

PMID: 32919583
DOI: 10.1016/j.hjdsi.2020.100444

Abstract

Trust in EHR data is becoming increasingly important as a greater share of clinical and health services research use EHR data. We discuss reasons for distrust and acknowledge limitations. Researchers continue to use EHR data because of strengths including greater clinical detail than sources like administrative billing claims. Further, many limitations are addressable with existing methods including data quality checks and common data frameworks. We discuss how to build greater trust in the use of EHR data for research, including additional transparency and research priority areas that will both enhance existing strengths of the EHR and mitigate its limitations.

MeSH terms

Data Accuracy*
Data Collection / standards
Data Collection / statistics & numerical data
Electronic Health Records / standards*
Electronic Health Records / statistics & numerical data
Humans