Reliability and validity assessment of administrative databases in measuring the quality of rectal cancer management.

Purpose: Measurement and monitoring of the quality of care using a core set of quality measures are increasing in health service research. Although administrative databases include limited clinical data, they offer an attractive source for quality measurement. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to evaluate the completeness of different administrative data sources compared to a clinical survey in evaluating rectal cancer cases.

Detection of clinical relapses in multiple sclerosis cohorts: construction and validation of a model based on administrative data.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the main cause of chronic disability in young people during their most productive years of life and therefore carries a high social and economic burden. The present study aimed to: (1) verify the capacity of an administrative data source to furnish data for constructing a model able to detect the occurrence of clinical relapses in MS patients and (2) validate the constructed theoretical model on a set of real-world data. Two MS experts identified some administrative variables as proxies of clinical relapses.