Assessing Electronic Health Records for Describing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities: A Research Note.

The use of data derived from electronic health records (EHRs) to describe racial and ethnic health disparities is increasingly common, but there are challenges. While the number of patients covered by EHRs can be quite large, such patients may not be representative of a source population. One way to evaluate the extent of this limitation is by linking EHRs to an external source, in this case with the American Community Survey (ACS).

Linking Electronic Health Records to the American Community Survey: Feasibility and Process.

To assess linkages of patient data from a health care system in the southeastern United States to microdata from the American Community Survey (ACS) with the goal of better understanding health disparities and social determinants of health in the population. Once a data use agreement was in place, a stratified random sample of approximately 200 000 was drawn of patients aged 25 to 74 years with at least 2 visits between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2019. Information from the sampled electronic health records (EHRs) was transferred securely to the Census Bureau, put through the Census Person Identification Validation System to assign Protected Identification Keys (PIKs) as unique identifiers wherever possible.