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Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study

There is a lack of quantitative evidence concerning UK (United Kingdom) Armed Forces (AF) veterans who access secondary mental health care services—specialist care often delivered in high intensity therapeutic clinics or hospitals—for their mental health difficulties. The current study aimed to inve...

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Autores principales: M. Mark, Katharine, Leightley, Daniel, Pernet, David, Murphy, Dominic, Stevelink, Sharon A.M., T. Fear, Nicola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151350/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31861575
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8010001
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author M. Mark, Katharine
Leightley, Daniel
Pernet, David
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A.M.
T. Fear, Nicola
author_facet M. Mark, Katharine
Leightley, Daniel
Pernet, David
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A.M.
T. Fear, Nicola
author_sort M. Mark, Katharine
collection PubMed
description There is a lack of quantitative evidence concerning UK (United Kingdom) Armed Forces (AF) veterans who access secondary mental health care services—specialist care often delivered in high intensity therapeutic clinics or hospitals—for their mental health difficulties. The current study aimed to investigate the utility and feasibility of identifying veterans accessing secondary mental health care services using National Health Service (NHS) electronic health records (EHRs) in the UK. Veterans were manually identified using the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system—a database holding secondary mental health care EHRs for an NHS Trust in the UK. We systematically and manually searched CRIS for veterans, by applying a military-related key word search strategy to the free-text clinical notes completed by clinicians. Relevant data on veterans’ socio-demographic characteristics, mental disorder diagnoses and treatment pathways through care were extracted for analysis. This study showed that it is feasible, although time consuming, to identify veterans through CRIS. Using the military-related key word search strategy identified 1600 potential veteran records. Following manual review, 693 (43.3%) of these records were verified as “probable” veterans and used for analysis. They had a median age of 74 years (interquartile range (IQR): 53–86); the majority were male (90.8%) and lived alone (38.0%). The most common mental diagnoses overall were depressive disorders (22.9%), followed by alcohol use disorders (10.5%). Differences in care pathways were observed between pre and post national service (NS) era veterans. This feasibility study represents a first step in showing that it is possible to identify veterans through free-text clinical notes. It is also the first to compare veterans from pre and post NS era.
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spelling pubmed-71513502020-04-20 Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study M. Mark, Katharine Leightley, Daniel Pernet, David Murphy, Dominic Stevelink, Sharon A.M. T. Fear, Nicola Healthcare (Basel) Article There is a lack of quantitative evidence concerning UK (United Kingdom) Armed Forces (AF) veterans who access secondary mental health care services—specialist care often delivered in high intensity therapeutic clinics or hospitals—for their mental health difficulties. The current study aimed to investigate the utility and feasibility of identifying veterans accessing secondary mental health care services using National Health Service (NHS) electronic health records (EHRs) in the UK. Veterans were manually identified using the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system—a database holding secondary mental health care EHRs for an NHS Trust in the UK. We systematically and manually searched CRIS for veterans, by applying a military-related key word search strategy to the free-text clinical notes completed by clinicians. Relevant data on veterans’ socio-demographic characteristics, mental disorder diagnoses and treatment pathways through care were extracted for analysis. This study showed that it is feasible, although time consuming, to identify veterans through CRIS. Using the military-related key word search strategy identified 1600 potential veteran records. Following manual review, 693 (43.3%) of these records were verified as “probable” veterans and used for analysis. They had a median age of 74 years (interquartile range (IQR): 53–86); the majority were male (90.8%) and lived alone (38.0%). The most common mental diagnoses overall were depressive disorders (22.9%), followed by alcohol use disorders (10.5%). Differences in care pathways were observed between pre and post national service (NS) era veterans. This feasibility study represents a first step in showing that it is possible to identify veterans through free-text clinical notes. It is also the first to compare veterans from pre and post NS era. MDPI 2019-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7151350/ /pubmed/31861575 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8010001 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
M. Mark, Katharine
Leightley, Daniel
Pernet, David
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A.M.
T. Fear, Nicola
Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title_full Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title_fullStr Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title_full_unstemmed Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title_short Identifying Veterans Using Electronic Health Records in the United Kingdom: A Feasibility Study
title_sort identifying veterans using electronic health records in the united kingdom: a feasibility study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151350/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31861575
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8010001
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