ArticleOpen access rheumatology : research and reviews2015
The use of administrative health care databases to identify patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Article in Open access rheumatology : research and reviews, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Accuracy of Diagnostic Codes and Algorithms Used to Identify Rheumatoid Arthritis and Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis in Administrative Claims and Electronic Health Records: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Arthritis care & research · 2026Pooled it
- Systematic review: development of a consensus code set to identify cirrhosis in electronic health records.Alimentary pharmacology & therapeutics · 2022Pooled it
- Validity of Algorithms for Identification of Individuals Suffering from Chronic Noncancer Pain in Administrative Databases: A Systematic Review.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2020Pooled it
- Impact of socioeconomic deprivation on risk and disease activity of Sjögren's disease.RMD open · 2026Article
- Cardiovascular Events During Pregnancy: Implications for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes in Individuals With Autoimmune and Rheumatic Diseases.The Journal of rheumatology · 2025Article
- Hospital-Treated Infections and 15-year Incidence of Musculoskeletal Disorders: A Large Population-Based Cohort Study.Clinical epidemiology · 2025Article
- A novel method to monitor rheumatoid arthritis prevalence using hospital and medication databases.Arthritis research & therapy · 2024Article
- Trends in avascular necrosis and related arthroplasties in hospitalized patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.Seminars in arthritis and rheumatism · 2024Article
- CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy in patients with concurrent B-cell Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and rheumatic autoimmune diseases: a propensity score matching study.Bone marrow transplantation · 2023Article
- Association between parental autoimmune disease and childhood atopic dermatitis varied by sex: a nationwide case-control study.Archives of dermatological research · 2023Article
- Article
- The prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis in Western Australia.BMC rheumatology · 2022Article
- Trends in hospitalizations for vertebral compression fracture in ankylosing spondylitis: data from the National Inpatient Sample 2000-2014.Clinical rheumatology · 2021Article
- Prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis in Edmonton and Northern Alberta.Clinical rheumatology · 2021Article
- Prevalence and Incidence of Rheumatoid Arthritis in Canadian First Nations and Non-First Nations People: A Population-Based Study.Journal of clinical rheumatology : practical reports on rheumatic & musculoskeletal diseases · 2020Article
- Risk of Inflammatory Arthritis After a New Diagnosis of Hidradenitis Suppurativa.JAMA dermatology · 2020Article
- Treatment Patterns of Newly Diagnosed Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients from a Commercially Insured Population.Rheumatology and therapy · 2018Article
- Prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis in the United States adult population in healthcare claims databases, 2004-2014.Rheumatology international · 2017Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo validate and compare the decision rules to identify rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in administrative databases.
methodsA study was performed using administrative health care data from a population of 1 million people who had access to universal health care. Information was available on hospital discharge abstracts and physician billings. RA cases in health administrative databases were matched 1:4 by age and sex to randomly selected controls without inflammatory arthritis. Seven case definitions were applied to identify RA cases in the health administrative data, and their performance was compared with the diagnosis by a rheumatologist. The validation study was conducted on a sample of individuals with administrative data who received a rheumatologist consultation at the Arthritis Center of Nova Scotia.
resultsWe identified 535 RA cases and 2,140 non-RA, noninflammatory arthritis controls. Using the rheumatologist's diagnosis as the gold standard, the overall accuracy of the case definitions for RA cases varied between 68.9% and 82.9% with a kappa statistic between 0.26 and 0.53. The sensitivity and specificity varied from 20.7% to 94.8% and 62.5% to 98.5%, respectively. In a reference population of 1 million, the estimated annual number of incident cases of RA was between 176 and 1,610 and the annual number of prevalent cases was between 1,384 and 5,722.
conclusionThe accuracy of case definitions for the identification of RA cases from rheumatology clinics using administrative health care databases is variable when compared to a rheumatologist's assessment. This should be considered when comparing results across studies. This variability may also be used as an advantage in different study designs, depending on the relative importance of sensitivity and specificity for identifying the population of interest to the research question.
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