Database differences in population characteristics and in data definitions, recording, quality and completeness had a minimal impact on key statistical outputs.
Following a preliminary audit of the existing coding system and in order to facilitate data recording, to improve the quality of information, to assume compatibility with terminological existing standards and to allow semantic interoperability with other local, national or international registries, a specific work has been conducted on the thesauri to integrate within the EfG-TS.
We deliberately restricted analysis to these 38 practices because we considered that high-quality data recording was required for an analysis at GP level, and all these practices contributed to an NHS Scotland national morbidity recording data set and had therefore received training in, and financial support for, high-quality data recording.
[ 58], systems in which, as informants pointed out, similar problems arise with the quality of data recording.
The focus of the practices action plan was on improving quality of data recording at new patient medicals.
In particular, since the linkage rates for this study were not as high as expected, this can point out the need for improvement of quality in data recording.
The theoretical basis for this intervention is that audit, feedback and professional meetings are known to have small but positive effects on the quality of data recording [ 18, 19].
First, as it is a secondary data analysis the study is reliant on the quality of primary data recording.
For pressure ulcer, a sensitivity of 47% was calculated in a comparison of routine data recorded in a quality management project with a cross-sectional validation survey [ 24].
With these studies, it is not possible to determine whether the heterogeneity of results is due to differences in data recording and quality between databases, or to differences in demographics and health between the covered populations.
