title: The challenges of linking health insurer claims with electronic medical records.
abstract: This article explores the challenges inherent in linking data from disparate sources-electronic medical records (EMR) and health insurer claims-and the probable benefits of doing so to evaluate several quality measures associated with diabetes. Using the business associate agreement provision of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, we were able to link health insurer claims with EMR data; however, when restricting the linked data to patients with at least one medication and one diagnosis in the evaluation year, we lost 90 percent of our linked population. Whether this loss was due to difficulties in extracting the data from site EMRs, to changes in insurer coverage over time, or to both was not discernible. Because linking EMR data to health insurer claims can produce a clinically rich longitudinal data set, assessing the completeness and quality of the data is critical to health services research and health-care quality measurements.
authors.affiliation: RTI International, USA; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
authors.forename: Suzanne L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: West
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Visscher
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kluckman
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Larsen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D019937:Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D020408:Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007345:Insurance Claim Review / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055553:Prescription Drugs; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D055553:Prescription Drugs
keywords: EMRs; Electronic medical records; Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH); Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA); health insurer claims; linkage