Multi-Institutional Sharing of Electronic Health Record Data to Assess Childhood Obesity.
PLoS One
; 8(6): e66192, 2013.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-23823186
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
To evaluate the validity of multi-institutional electronic health record (EHR) data sharing for surveillance and study of childhood obesity.METHODS:
We conducted a non-concurrent cohort study of 528,340 children with outpatient visits to six pediatric academic medical centers during 2007-08, with sufficient data in the EHR for body mass index (BMI) assessment. EHR data were compared with data from the 2007-08 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).RESULTS:
Among children 2-17 years, BMI was evaluable for 1,398,655 visits (56%). The EHR dataset contained over 6,000 BMI measurements per month of age up to 16 years, yielding precise estimates of BMI. In the EHR dataset, 18% of children were obese versus 18% in NHANES, while 35% were obese or overweight versus 34% in NHANES. BMI for an individual was highly reliable over time (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.90 for obese children and 0.97 for all children). Only 14% of visits with measured obesity (BMI ≥95%) had a diagnosis of obesity recorded, and only 20% of children with measured obesity had the diagnosis documented during the study period. Obese children had higher primary care (4.8 versus 4.0 visits, p<0.001) and specialty care (3.7 versus 2.7 visits, p<0.001) utilization than non-obese counterparts, and higher prevalence of diverse co-morbidities. The cohort size in the EHR dataset permitted detection of associations with rare diagnoses. Data sharing did not require investment of extensive institutional resources, yet yielded high data quality.CONCLUSIONS:
Multi-institutional EHR data sharing is a promising, feasible, and valid approach for population health surveillance. It provides a valuable complement to more resource-intensive national surveys, particularly for iterative surveillance and quality improvement. Low rates of obesity diagnosis present a significant obstacle to surveillance and quality improvement for care of children with obesity.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Overweight
/
Electronic Health Records
/
Pediatric Obesity
/
Interinstitutional Relations
Type of study:
Observational_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Child
/
Child, preschool
/
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
America do norte
Language:
En
Journal:
PLoS One
Journal subject:
CIENCIA
/
MEDICINA
Year:
2013
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States