Measuring Diabetes Care Performance Using Electronic Health Record Data: The Impact of Diabetes Definitions on Performance Measure Outcomes

Abstract

The objective was to examine the use of electronic health record (EHR) data for diabetes performance measurement. Data were extracted from the EHR of a health system to identify patients with diabetes using 8 different EHR data-based methods of identification. These EHR-based methods were compared to the gold standard of a manual medical record review. The study team then assessed whether the method of identifying patients with diabetes could affect performance measurement scores. The sensitivity of the 8 EHR-based methods of identifying patients with diabetes ranged from moderate to high. The use of certain data elements in the EHR to identify patients with diabetes selectively identified those who had better performance measures. Diabetes performance measures are influenced by the data elements used to identify patients. As EHR data are used increasingly to measure performance, continuing to improve our understanding of how EHR data are collected and used will be critical.

Keywords: diabetes; health information technology; performance measurement.