Introduction
To determine if using a combination of hospital administrative data and ambulatory care physician billings can accurately identify patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), we tested 9 algorithms for identifying individuals with CHF from administrative data.
Methods
The validation cohort against which the 9 algorithms were tested combined data from a random sample of adult patients from EMRALD, an electronic medical record database of primary care physicians in Ontario, Canada, and data collected in 2004/05 from a random sample of primary care patients for a study of hypertension. Algorithms were evaluated on sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, area under the curve on the ROC graph and the combination of likelihood ratio positive and negative.
Results
We found that that one hospital record or one physician billing followed by a second record from either source within one year had the best result, with a sensitivity of 84.8% and a specificity of 97.0%.
Conclusion
Population prevalence of CHF can be accurately measured using combined administrative data from hospitalization and ambulatory care.
A concept map is a graph in which the nodes represent concepts, the lines between the nodes represent relations, and the labels on the lines represent the nature of the relations. Concept maps have been used to assess students' knowledge structures, especially in science education. Two concept mapping techniques, constructing a map and filling in a map that has been started were compared to see if the mapping techniques can be considered equivalent, whether the fill-in-the-map techniques are sensitive to the nodes selected to be completed, and whether the fill-in-the-map scores are sensitive to the linking lines selected to be filled-in. Participants were 152 high school chemistry students in 7 classes taught by 2 teachers. On three occasions students constructed or filled in maps as directed. The fill-in (skeleton) map scores were not sensitive to the sample of nodes or linking lines to be filled in. Fill-in-the-nodes and fill-in-the-lines are not equivalent forms of fill-in-the-map, but further research is needed to determine which of these forms provides more accurate information. Results suggest that both mapping techniques are tapping somewhat similar, but not identical, aspects of students' understanding. Construct-a-map scores more accurately reflect the differences across students' knowledge structures, and the relationship between scores from the multiple-choice test and both mapping techniques confirms that the mapping techniques are not equivalent.
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