Comparison of the performance of mental health, drug and alcohol comorbidities based on ICD-10-AM and medical records for predicting 12-month outcomes in trauma patients

BACKGROUND: Many outcome studies capture the presence of mental health, drug and alcohol comorbidities from administrative datasets and medical records. How these sources compare as predictors of patient outcomes has not been determined. The purpose of the present study was to compare mental health, drug and alcohol comorbidities based on ICD-10-AM coding and medical record documentation for predicting longer-term outcomes in injured patients. METHODS: A random sample of patients (n = 500) captured by the Victorian State Trauma Registry was selected for the study. Retrospective medical record reviews were conducted to collect data about documented mental health, drug and alcohol comorbidities while ICD-10-AM codes were obtained from routinely collected hospital data. Outcomes at 12-months post-injury were the Glasgow Outcome Scale – Extended (GOS-E), European Quality of Life Five Dimensions (EQ-5D-3L), and return to work. Linear and logistic regression models, adjusted for age and gender, using medical record derived comorbidity and ICD-10-AM were compared using measures of calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow statistic) and discrimination (C-statistic and R(2)). RESULTS: There was no demonstrable difference in predictive performance between the medical record and ICD-10-AM models for predicting the GOS-E, EQ-5D-3L utility sore and EQ-5D-3L mobility, self-care, usual activities and pain/discomfort items. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUC) for models using medical record derived comorbidity (AUC 0.68, 95% CI: 0.63, 0.73) was higher than the model using ICD-10-AM data (AUC 0.62, 95% CI: 0.57, 0.67) for predicting the EQ-5D-3L anxiety/depression item. The discrimination of the model for predicting return to work was higher with inclusion of the medical record data (AUC 0.69, 95% CI: 0.63, 0.76) than the ICD-10-AM data (AUC 0.59, 95% CL: 0.52, 0.65). CONCLUSIONS: Mental health, drug and alcohol comorbidity information derived from medical record review was not clearly superior for predicting the majority of the outcomes assessed when compared to ICD-10-AM. While information available in medical records may be more comprehensive than in the ICD-10-AM, there appears to be little difference in the discriminative capacity of comorbidities coded in the two sources. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3248-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.