Agreement between caregiver reported healthcare utilization and administrative data for children with asthma

Lee TA, Weiss KB. Agreement between caregiver reported healthcare utilization and administrative data for children with asthma. Poster session presented at: American Thoracic Society Annual International Conference; 2005 May 1; San Diego, CA.

RATIONALE: In asthma, healthcare utilization is frequently used as an outcome measure. That information can come from several sources, including self-report, medical charts or administrative claims data. The objective of this analysis was to compare the level of agreement between caregiver reported healthcare utilization and medical claims data in a sample of children and their caregivers enrolled in the Pediatric Asthma Care PORT clinical trial. METHODS: Children, ages 3 to 15, with mild to moderate persistent asthma were enrolled and followed for two years. For this analysis all participants were combined into a single group. Asthma-related healthcare utilization during follow-up period was reported by caregivers at 8 week telephone interviews. Additionally, administrative claims data was extracted from health plans of participating patients. We compared reported asthma-related hospitalizations, ED visits and outpatient visits between the two data sources. RESULTS: A total of 396 patients enrolled in the study had administrative data available. The average number of hospitalizations reported was similar between sources (Table). For ED visits and outpatient visits there were more contacts reported by caregivers than in the administrative data (Table). CONCLUSION: While, the two data sources resulted in similar estimates of healthcare utilization over a two-year clinical trial, the largest relative difference was in ED visits between the two data sources with caregivers over-reporting compared to administrative data.