Health care data must be accurate. Incorrect data can lead to faulty conclusions and poor outcomes. Accuracy begins at the source and data must be entered correctly. When errors are found, they should be corrected immediately.

Complete health care data should have no gaps. If providers or health care workers do not gather complete information about a patient—such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, vital signs, medication lists, allergies, implanted devices, immunizations, labs and procedure results.—it can lead to inadequate care. Vital signs have several components, not only blood pressure recordings, but heart rate, respiratory rate and oxygen level, height and weight, and BMI. Each of these components are crucial for accurate decision making in diagnosis and treatment.

Relevant data avoids duplication and redundancy, which cause fatigue.

Validity refers to how health care data are collected rather than data itself. Data are valid if it is in the right format, of the correct type, and falls within the right range. Validity is critical to organizing and analyzing data.

Timeliness represents how and when data was collected and recorded. Outdated data leads to inaccurate diagnosis and treatment. Actionable good quality data without gaps represents data that is collected and recoded live and available when it is needed.

Consistent data must be identical and reproducible when accessed by users across systems, databases and applications. Health care data should be reliable in both format and contents.

Rochester RHIO strives to collect accurate, complete, relevant and valid data in a timely and consistent manner. Explore+, the advanced clinical query portal, accommodates data quality changes and enhancements on the go; it is a great model of the organization’s commitment to serve 14 counties in the best way possible.

Quality data is a partnership between data sources and health information exchange (HIE); without one another, data is incomplete. In my role as Medical Director of Rochester RHIO, I check for gaps in data received by the HIE from various sources: physician’s offices, hospitals, health systems, community-based organizations, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, hospice, federally funded clinics, etc. Provider education, including standards of care and documentation, is the key to collecting accurate quality data.

Last fall, RHIO brought awareness to the importance of quality data by hosting the first-ever regional health data conference. This year, RHIO is working hard to identify gaps that exist in race and ethnicity data and launching a future effort to tackle quality improvements related to demographics.

Tarun Kothari MD, FACG, FACP

Medical Director

Rochester RHIO