Ascertainment of Aspirin Exposure Using Structured and Unstructured Large-scale Electronic Health Record Data.

BACKGROUND

Aspirin impacts risk for important outcomes such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal bleeding. However, ascertaining exposure to medications available both by prescription and over-the-counter such as aspirin for research and quality improvement purposes is a challenge.

OBJECTIVES

Develop and validate a strategy for ascertaining aspirin exposure, utilizing a combination of structured and unstructured data.

RESEARCH DESIGN

This is a retrospective cohort study.

SUBJECTS

In total, 1,869,439 Veterans who underwent usual care colonoscopy 1999-2014 within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

MEASURES

Aspirin exposure and dose were obtained from an ascertainment strategy combining query of structured medication records available in electronic health record databases and unstructured data extracted from free-text progress notes. Prevalence of any aspirin exposure and dose-specific exposure were estimated. Positive predictive value and negative predictive value were used to assess strategy performance, using manual chart review as the reference standard.

RESULTS

Our combined strategy for ascertaining aspirin exposure using structured and unstructured data reached a positive predictive value and negative predictive value of 99.2% and 97.5% for any exposure, and 92.6% and 98.3% for dose-specific exposure. Estimated prevalence of any aspirin exposure was 36.3% (95% confidence interval: 36.2%-36.4%) and dose-specific exposure was 35.4% (95% confidence interval: 35.3%-35.5%).

CONCLUSIONS

A readily accessible approach utilizing a combination of structured medication records and query of unstructured data can be used to ascertain aspirin exposure when manual chart review is impractical.