Findings on Health Insurance Reported by C.A. Behrendt et al (Registry and health insurance claims data in vascular research and quality improvement)

Insurance Weekly News

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Health Insurance. According to news reporting from Hamburg, Germany, by VerticalNews journalists, research stated, "The expansion of procedures in multidisciplinary vascular medicine has sparked a controversy regarding measures of quality improvement. In addition to primary registries, the use of health insurance claims data is becoming of increasing importance."

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research, "However, due to the fact that health insurance claims data are not collected for scientific evaluation but rather for reimbursement purposes, meticulous validation is necessary before and during usage in research and quality improvement matters. This review highlights the advantages and disadvantages of such data sources. A recent comprehensive expert opinion panel examined the use of health insurance claims data and other administrative data sources in medicine. Results from several studies concerning the validity of administrative data varied significantly. Validity of these data sources depends on the clinical relevance of the diagnoses considered. The rate of implausible information was 0.04%, white the validity of the considered diagnoses varied between 80 and 97 % across multiple validation studies. A matching study between health insurance claims data of the third-largest German health insurance provider, DAK-Gesundheit, and a prospective primary registry of the German Society for Vascular Surgery demonstrated a good level of validity regarding the mortality of endovascular and open surgical treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm in German hospitals. In addition, a large-scale international comparison of administrative data for the same disorder presented important results in treatment reality, which differed from those from earlier randomized controlled trials. The importance of administrative data for research and quality improvement wilt continue to increase in the future. When discussing the internal and external validity of this data source, one has to distinguish not only between its intended usage (research vs. quality improvement), but also between the included diseases and/or treatment procedures."

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "Linkage between primary registry data and administrative data could be a reasonable solution to some current major issues of validity."

For more information on this research see: Registry and health insurance claims data in vascular research and quality improvement. Vasa-European Journal of Vascular Medicine, 2017;46(1):11-15. Vasa-European Journal of Vascular Medicine can be contacted at: Verlag Hans Huber Hogrefe Ag, Laenggass-Strasse 76, Ch-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting C.A. Behrendt, GermanVasc, Dept. of Vasc Med, Hamburg, Germany. Additional authors for this research include F. Heidemann, H.C. Riess, K. Stoberock and S.E. Debus.