Measuring Mortality Information in Clinical Data Warehouses

The ability to track and report long-term outcomes, especially mortality, is essential for advancing clinical research. The purpose of this study was to present a framework for assessing the quality of mortality information in clinical research databases. Using the clinical data warehouse (CDW) at Columbia University Medical Center as a case study, we measured: 1) agreement in vital status between our institution’s patient registration system and the U.S. Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF), 2) the proportion of patients marked as deceased according to the DMF records who had subsequent visits to our institution, and 3) the proportion of patients still living according to Columbia’s CDW who were over 100 and 120 years of age. Of 33,295 deaths recorded in our institution’s patient registration system, 13,167 (39.5%) did not exist in the DMF. Of 315,037 patients in our CDW who marked as deceased according to the DMF, 2.1% had a subsequent clinical encounter at our institution. The proportion of patients still living according to Columbia’s CDW who were over 100 and 120 years of age was 43.6% and 43.1%, respectively. These measures may be useful to other clinical research investigators seeking to assess the quality of mortality data (1–4).