title: Comparison of Medicare claims versus physician adjudication for identifying stroke outcomes in the Women's Health Initiative.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Many studies use medical record review for ascertaining outcomes. One large, longitudinal study, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), ascertains strokes using participant self-report and subsequent physician review of medical records. This is resource-intensive. Herein, we assess whether Medicare data can reliably assess stroke events in the WHI.
  
  
  METHODS
  Subjects were WHI participants with fee-for-service Medicare. Four stroke definitions were created for Medicare data using discharge diagnoses in hospitalization claims: definition 1, stroke codes in any position; definition 2, primary position stroke codes; and definitions 3 and 4, hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke codes, respectively. WHI data were randomly split into training (50%) and test sets. A concordance matrix was used to examine the agreement between WHI and Medicare stroke diagnosis. A WHI stroke and a Medicare stroke were considered a match if they occurred within ±7 days of each other. Refined analyses excluded Medicare events when medical records were unavailable for comparison.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Training data consisted of 24 428 randomly selected participants. There were 577 WHI strokes and 557 Medicare strokes using definition 1. Of these, 478 were a match. With regard to algorithm performance, specificity was 99.7%, negative predictive value was 99.7%, sensitivity was 82.8%, positive predictive value was 85.8%, and κ=0.84. Performance was similar for test data. Whereas specificity and negative predictive value exceeded 99%, sensitivity ranged from 75% to 88% and positive predictive value ranged from 80% to 90% across stroke definitions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Medicare data seem useful for population-based stroke research; however, performance characteristics depend on the definition selected.
authors: From the Divisions of Epidemiology and Community Health (K.L., C.F.) and Health Services Research and Policy (B.V.), University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN; Women's Health Initiative Clinical Coordinating Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA (J.C.L.); Department of Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL (N.B.A.); Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (M.L.); Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA (W.C.W.); Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL (M.M.S.); and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (D.R.B.).
authors: Kamakshi
authors: K
authors: Lakshminarayan
authors: Joseph C
authors: JC
authors: Larson
authors: Beth
authors: B
authors: Virnig
authors: Candace
authors: C
authors: Fuller
authors: Norrina Bai
authors: NB
authors: Allen
authors: Marian
authors: M
authors: Limacher
authors: Wolfgang C
authors: WC
authors: Winkelmayer
authors: Monika M
authors: MM
authors: Safford
authors: Dale R
authors: DR
authors: Burwen
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000628:therapy; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D020300:Intracranial Hemorrhages / Q000628:therapy; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D006278:Medicare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020521:Stroke / Q000628:therapy*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States; D016387:Women's Health
keywords: Medicare; stroke; validation studies