Agreement in race-ethnicity coding between a hospital discharge database and another database.
OBJECTIVE
This study assessed the agreement in coding of race and Hispanic ethnicity for the same patients in a hospital discharge database and another database.


METHODS
Race-ethnicity coding was examined for 72,276 cancer patients discharged from Connecticut hospitals (1992-1997) who were linked with the statewide cancer registry that included information on birthplace (for 76% of patients) and surname (for all patients). Surnames in the cancer registry were also linked with a list of Spanish surnames, to improve ascertainment of ethnicity among patients of probable Hispanic origin.


RESULTS
Kappa coefficients (kappa) indicated substantial agreement (beyond that expected by chance) for White (kappa = .74) and Black (kappa = .93) race, Hispanic ethnicity (kappa = .73) and non-Hispanic White race-ethnicity (kappa = .83) categories. Kappa was moderate (ie, .52) for the Asian-Pacific Islander race category. Only 42% of Asian-Pacific Islanders and 62% of Hispanics in the cancer registry were similarly coded in the discharge database.


CONCLUSIONS
Although both databases are imperfect, the findings suggest that ascertainment of certain racial-ethnic groups in hospital discharge databases could be improved if birthplace and surname were available.
Polednak
A P
AP
Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation, Connecticut Department of Public Health, Hartford 06134, USA.
D003237:Connecticut; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005006:Ethnicity; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms; D010351:Patient Discharge; D012042:Registries