The American journal of managed care
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Comparative Study
Accuracy of computerized outpatient diagnoses in a Veterans Affairs general medicine clinic.
Electronically available data, both administrative, such as outpatient encounter diagnostic data, and clinical, such as problem lists, are being used increasingly for outcome and quality assessment, risk adjustment, and clinical reminder systems. ⋯ Outpatient encounter diagnoses relevant to hypertension recorded as electronic data had high specificity, and some codes had high sensitivity when collected over multiple visits. The administrative file was more sensitive but less specific than the clinical file. Administrative vs clinical files can be selected to minimize either the false-negative or the false-positive designations, respectively, as dictated by the needs of the quality assessment review.