Unplanned Returns to Hospital Care: A Linked Data Study.

The linkage of data across facilities and settings of care provides a holistic view of the patient journey through the healthcare system. This study, through data linkage, reviews alternative approaches to the measurement of unplanned returns to care in NSW public hospital emergency departments and admitted patient care settings. The study shows that existing measures of unplanned returns do not identify the true extent of these events and highlight the need to develop new approaches to measurement using the increasing availability of integrated patient information.

Optimal strategy for linkage of datasets containing a statistical linkage key and datasets with full personal identifiers.

Background: Linkage of aged care and hospitalisation data provides valuable information on patterns of health service utilisation among aged care service recipients. Many aged care datasets in Australia contain a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK-581) instead of full personal identifiers. We linked hospital and death records using a full probabilistic strategy, the SLK-581, and three combined strategies; and compared results for each strategy.