Baja concordancia entre la información clínica de atención primaria y hospital

OBJECTIVES: To measure the diagnostic agreement between Primary Care (PC) and hospital information systems, in order to assess the usefulness of health care records for research purposes. SETTING: Cross-sectional retrospective study integrating PC and hospital diagnostic information for the Aragon population admitted to hospital in 2010. PARTICIPANTS: 75.176 patients were analysed. INTERVENTIONS: Similarities, differences and the kappa index were calculated for each of the diagnoses recorded in both information systems. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: The studied diseases included COPD, diabetes, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, ischaemic heart disease, asthma, epilepsy, and heart failure. RESULTS: Diagnostic concordance was higher in men and between 45 and 64 years. Diabetes was the condition showing the highest concordance (kappa index: 0.75), while asthma had the lowest values (kappa index: 0.34). CONCLUSIONS: The low concordance between the diagnostic information recorded in PC and in the hospital setting calls for urgent measures to ensure that healthcare professionals have a comprehensive picture of patient's health problems.