An experience in psychiatric record linkage.
This paper describes a personal experience in setting up a psychiatric record linkage system in an Eastern Ontario city. It discusses the rationale, background and methodology of the Kingston Psychiatric Record Linkage System and includes a detailed description of the practical issues encountered in its establishment and operation. The issues include funding, cooperation of local facilities, system start-up, operating costs, and data collection, linkage, entry, processing, storage and analysis. The limitations and uses of this system are discussed. Potential problems such as financial support and reliance on others have been resolved and the system has been functioning remarkably well since 1984. Published reports from other record linkage systems do not include such mundane details which would have been useful to know before planning this project. It is hoped that this paper will be beneficial to others who are interested in record linkage.
Woogh
C M
CM
Department of Psychiatry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.
D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008498:Medical Record Linkage; D008499:Medical Records; D009864:Ontario; D011570:Psychiatry