Dalrymple A J, Lahti L S, Hutchinson L J, O'Doherty J J
Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
J Ment Health Adm. 1994 Spring;21(2):185-92. doi: 10.1007/BF02521325.
Assembling information about individuals over time allows health managers and researchers to describe the progression of diseases, the care history of individuals and the sequences of care episodes that potentially result in improving individuals' health status. However, current mental health statistics generally focus on sets of events rather than groups of individuals making it impossible to distinguish between two different persons being admitted and the same person being admitted twice. Accurate figures on treatment prevalence cannot be generated and multiservice users across time or across agencies will inflate the statistics used to plan needed services. The capacity to link consistently defined bits of information together is critical to developing a reliable information system. This article examines the adequacy of using unique identifier codes to accomplish linkage by focusing on one example of record linkage that incorporates mental health information from both community and institutional sectors in one region of Ontario, Canada. Findings indicate that unique "cradle to grave" identifiers do not guarantee accuracy if manual transcription is involved.
随着时间的推移收集个人信息，有助于健康管理人员和研究人员描述疾病的发展进程、个人的护理历史以及可能改善个人健康状况的护理事件序列。然而，目前的心理健康统计数据通常关注事件集而非个人群体，这使得无法区分是两名不同的人入院，还是同一个人入院两次。无法得出准确的治疗患病率数据，而且跨时间或跨机构的多服务使用者会使用于规划所需服务的统计数据膨胀。将一致定义的信息片段链接在一起的能力对于开发可靠的信息系统至关重要。本文通过关注加拿大安大略省一个地区将社区和机构部门的心理健康信息纳入其中的一个记录链接示例，研究使用唯一标识符代码来完成链接的充分性。研究结果表明，如果涉及人工转录，唯一的“从摇篮到坟墓”标识符并不能保证准确性。
