Identifying Patient Readmissions: Are Our Data Sources Misleading?

The accuracy of data is vital to identifying hospitalization outcomes for clinical trials. Patient attrition and recall bias affects the validity of patient-reported outcomes, and the growing prevalence of Medicare Advantage (MA) could mean Fee-for-Service (FFS) claims are less reliable for ascertaining hospital utilization. Statewide health information exchanges (HIEs) may be a more complete data source but have not been frequently used for research.