Internal deterministic record linkage using indirect identifiers for matching of same-patient hospital transfers and early readmissions after acute coronary syndrome in a nationwide hospital discharge database: a retrospective observational validation ...

What is it about?

In this manuscript we built, test and validate a matching algorithm using indirect identifiers to link patient-level hospitalizations due to acute coronary syndrome and, from event-based variables and a predefined time-frame, define an episode of care which will be the new unit of analysis in trend and health service performance studies. The rationale behind linking contiguous hospitalizations and combining information as one episode of care is to avoid distortions from double-counting of transferred patients and those admitted early within the same episode of care, thereby avoiding inflation of hospitalization trend data and underestimation of estimates of in-hospital mortality and performance indicators at national, regional and hospital-levels.

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