Comparison of methods to correct the miscounting of multiple episodes of care when estimating the incidence of hospitalised injury in child motor vehicle passengers

This study evaluates the performance of different case selection criteria to account for multiple episodes of care when estimating the hospitalisation rate due to road trauma amongst children. The internally linked NSW Inpatient Statistics Collection (ISC) dataset for the period between 1st July, 20...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Accident analysis and prevention 2008-07, Vol.40 (4), p.1563-1568
Main Authors: Du, Wei, Hayen, Andrew, Finch, Caroline, Hatfield, Julie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accidents, Traffic - statistics & numerical data
Adolescent
Child
Child, Preschool
Databases, Factual
Double counting
Hospitalised injury
Hospitalization - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Incidence
Incidence estimate
Infant
Multiple counting
New South Wales - epidemiology
Patient Selection
Reproducibility of Results
Retrospective Studies
Sensitivity and Specificity
Wounds and Injuries - diagnosis
Wounds and Injuries - epidemiology
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Summary:This study evaluates the performance of different case selection criteria to account for multiple episodes of care when estimating the hospitalisation rate due to road trauma amongst children. The internally linked NSW Inpatient Statistics Collection (ISC) dataset for the period between 1st July, 2000 and 30th June, 2003 was used to identify the “single” episode of care for each hospitalised child motor vehicle passenger residing in NSW. We used two hospitalised injury definitions of a case based on (1) all-diagnoses and (2) principal diagnosis only. We then developed case selection criteria, based on (a) linkage methods only available from linked ISC datasets; (b) selected variables available in both the linked and unlinked ISC datasets, to exclude repeat episodes of care for an injury. Changes in the estimated hospitalisation rate, and sensitivity and specificity, were calculated for each selection criteria compared to the findings from linkage methods as the “gold standard”. None of the correction methods for multiple episodes of care was clearly superior in terms of incidence estimation, sensitivity, and specificity concurrently. However, the correction criterion which is optimal may vary depending on different study objectives and different types of hospitalised injuries.
ISSN:0001-4575
1879-2057
DOI:10.1016/j.aap.2008.04.003