The completeness of chest X-ray procedure codes in the Danish National Patient Registry

Peter Hjertholm,1 Kaare Rud Flarup,1 Louise Mahncke Guldbrandt,1 Peter Vedsted1,2 1Research Center for Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care, Department of Public Health, 2University Clinic for Innovative Health Care Delivery, Diagnostic Centre, Silkeborg Hospital, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Objective: The aim of this validation study was to assess the completeness of the registrations of chest X-rays (CXR) in two different versions of the Danish National Patient Registry (DNPR). Material and methods: We included electronic record data on CXR performed on patients aged 40 to 99 years from nine radiology departments covering 20 Danish hospitals. From each department, we included data from three randomly selected weeks between 2004 and 2011 (reference standard). In two versions of the DNPR from the State Serum Institute (SSI) and Statistics Denmark, respectively, we investigated the proportion of registered CXR compared to the reference standard. Furthermore, we compared the completeness of the recorded data according to the responsible department (main department). Results: We identified 11,235 patients and 12,513 CXR in the reference standard. The data from the SSI contained 12,265 (98%) CXR, whereas the data from Statistics Denmark comprised 9,151 (73.1%) CXR. The completeness of the SSI data was fairly constant across years, radiology departments, medical specialties, and age groups. The data from Statistics Denmark was almost complete in 2011 (95.8%). However, for the remaining study period, the data with radiology departments registered as the main department were lacking in the version from Statistics Denmark, and so the overall completeness was 73.1%. Conclusion: The completeness of CXR registrations varied between 98% and 73% depending on the information source, and this should be considered when investigating radiology services in the basis of DNPR. Keywords: chest X-ray, Danish National Patient Registry, diagnostic procedures, validation study, general practice, primary health car

Doing PhD in primary care diagnosis and treatment of cancer

Special Issue: Abstracts of the Cancer and Primary Care Research International (Ca-PRI) Network 8th Annual Meeting, 20-22 May 2015, DenmarkWorkshop abstractThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record

Explaining the Enhanced HIPC Initiative: A Response to Michaelowa (2003)

Michaelowa (2003, 2002) proposes a political-economy model to explain the re-design of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) debt reliefinitiative in 1999. The principal assumption justifying the adoption of thisalternative approach is an alleged paucity, if not non-existence, of applied economic research on sustainable debt levels. This note challenges that assumption. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004

Knowledge or noise? Making sense of General Practitioners’ and Consultant use of two-week-wait referrals for suspected cancer

This work was funded by the National Awareness & Early Diagnosis Initiative. It was undertaken in the secure environment of the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, which is funded by the Northern Ireland Public Health Agency. We are grateful to the staff in the Health & Social Care Board for their advice and guidance on this study.Peer reviewedPostprin