He studied notations on charts, iconography and a manuscript from 1587 that contained information about the rigging.
Alcohol use was categorized as NIDU if there was a provider notation in the chart of heavy alcohol use, or an alcohol-related clinical diagnosis (e.g. alcoholic liver disease).
Each risk factor required specific notation in the chart to be included as assessed or present.
Most importantly, to our knowledge this is the first study where agreement in suicide attempts determined by chart notation and E-codes was evaluated.
In the suicide death sample, one patient had an attempt coded in administrative data on the date of completed suicide, but without a chart notation.
All measures of accuracy, including sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV), were calculated using chart notation as the "gold standard".
Though chart notation is not expected to be fully comprehensive or without errors, we expected it to be more comprehensive than the diagnostic coding.
This study was conducted to validate the administrative diagnoses of four key behavioural variables often used in mental health and health services research by comparing them to the presence of the corresponding conditions in chart notation.
a Combined sample of suicide deaths and controls b Rounded to a whole number c The chart notation had to be clear it was referring to a suicide attempt occurring in the past 12 months.
