title: Following Up Crack Users after Hospital Discharge Using Record Linkage Methodology: An Alternative to Find Hidden Populations.
abstract: This paper presents the probabilistic record linkage (PRL) methodology as an alternative way to find or follow up hard-to-reach population as crack users. PRL was based on secondary data from public health information systems and the strategy used from standardization; phonetic encoding and the rounds of matching data were described. A total of 293 patient records from medical database and two administrative datasets obtained from Ministry of Health Information Systems were used. Patient information from the medical database was the identifiers to the administrative datasets containing data on outpatient treatment and hospital admissions. 40% of patient records were found in the hospital database and 12% were found in the outpatient database; 95% of the patients were hospitalized up to 5 times, and only 10 out of them had outpatient information. The record linkage methodology by linking government databases may help to address research questions about the path of patients in the care network without spending time and financial resources with primary data collection.
authors.affiliation: Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Clinics Hospital of Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 400 Professor Alvaro Alvim Street, 90420-020 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil ; Information Technology Department of the Unified Health System, National Ministry of Health, Brazil.
authors.forename: Veralice Maria
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Gonçalves
authors.affiliation: Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Clinics Hospital of Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 400 Professor Alvaro Alvim Street, 90420-020 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Rosemeri
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pedroso
authors.affiliation: Information Technology Department of the Unified Health System, National Ministry of Health, Brazil.
authors.forename: Antônio Marcos
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: dos Santos
authors.affiliation: Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Clinics Hospital of Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 400 Professor Alvaro Alvim Street, 90420-020 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Lisia Von
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Diemen
authors.affiliation: Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, Clinics Hospital of Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, 400 Professor Alvaro Alvim Street, 90420-020 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Flavio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pechansky
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D055030:Drug Users / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D010351:Patient Discharge