Using Medicare claims data to assess provider quality for CABG surgery: does it work well enough?
If administrative databases are used in outcomes research, (1) efforts to distinguish complications of care from comorbidities should be undertaken, (2) much more accurate assessments may be obtained by appending a limited number of clinical data elements to administrative data before assessing outcomes, and (3) Medicare data may be misleading because they do not reflect outcomes for all patients.
Recommendations are proposed to limit the impact of drug-induced renal disease in future SIV macaque studies.