Home care after hip fracture in a health planning region.

Health-care restructuring has increased the focus on integrating health care. Therefore the study purpose was to quantify patient movement from hospital to home care before restructuring occurred in a health planning district. Hospital discharge abstracts and home care records identified patients with a hip fracture who used home care (n = 353). Patients from acute care were more likely than rehabilitation or convalescent inpatients to wait > 3 days for home care after hospital discharge (RR 1.54, 95% CI 1.18, 2.00). Institution-dwellers were more likely than community-dwellers to wait > 3 days for home care (RR 2.35, 95% CI 1.86, 2.97). Home care rehabilitation clients were more likely than non-rehabilitation users to wait > 3 days for home care (RR 2.10, 95% CI 1.42, 3.09). Waiting time for home care is associated with hospital care setting and the home care service utilized. Evaluations of restructuring efforts should consider accounting for these relationships.

Regional variation in angiography, coronary artery bypass surgery, and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty in Manitoba, 1987 to 1992: the funnel effect.

OBJECTIVES: Administrative data from Manitoba, Canada document variation in procedure utilization rates over a period of 15 years. With coronary angiography and cardiovascular surgery centralized in the capital, Winnipeg, previous analyses from 1977 to 1983 found angiography and coronary artery bypass surgery (CABS) rates to be higher for residents of Winnipeg. Residents of the Western region had consistently lower rates; this variation in regional access appeared due to physician practice patterns. In this study all angiography patients were followed from 1987 to 1992 and rates of CABS and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) calculated. METHODS: Cox proportional hazard multivariate regression models with five sociodemographic variables and two clinical variables (time from angiography to revascularization, and comorbidities) also were examined. RESULTS: Consistent regional variation was documented; rates in the Western region remain consistently low. A "funnel effect" is found; the fewer patients from a region referred for angiography, the fewer patients from that region who have CABS or PTCA. CONCLUSIONS: Implications of the persistence of these findings are discussed. Individuals in Western Manitoba probably have some of the lowest rates of coronary artery bypass surgery and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty in North America.

Record linkage strategies, outpatient procedures, and administrative data.

By understanding the range of approaches implicit in modern record linkage, epidemiologists and health services researchers can better decide its suitability for their needs. The authors discuss a small record linkage project, providing a sense of where mistakes were made. The research first uses existing identification numbers as a gold standard for linking hospital abstracts and physician claims to investigate whether or not coronary angiography was performed on a given individual. Even if identification numbers are not available, a successful linkage (with more than 95% of the cases matched) may be possible under some circumstances. The linkage process highlights problems with the consistent recording of coronary angiography in inpatient and outpatient hospital abstracts. Our approach should prove useful when the same procedure is recorded in more than one place on a single file and when validating a procedure (or other event) across files is important. Given the growing number of health care databases and ongoing changes in the delivery of care, record linkage often can provide quality control and expand research opportunities in a timely fashion.