Implications of data quality problems within hospital administrative databases

Abstract

Administrative data, even with some coding irregularities, is easily accessible, inexpensive, and includes episodes from several years for large populations. This routine data can be used to study hospital performance and to screen potential problems in healthcare. In this context, the quality of data is a fundamental issue if we want to achieve reliable results. In fact, the problem of poor data quality cannot be ignored and should more and more be considered. In this paper we present some issues about quality problems, expose some examples of poor data in administrative databases and discuss some potential implications of these problems. © 2010 International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.