Roberts, E;
Doidge, JC;
Harron, KL;
Hotopf, M;
Knight, J;
White, M;
Eastwood, B;
(2020)
National administrative record linkage between specialist community drug and alcohol treatment data (the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS)) and inpatient hospitalisation data (Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)) in England: design, method and evaluation.
BMJ Open
, 10
(11)
, Article e043540. 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043540.
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Abstract
Objectives: The creation and evaluation of a national record linkage between substance misuse treatment, and inpatient hospitalisation data in England. / Design: A deterministic record linkage using personal identifiers to link the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) curated by Public Health England (PHE), and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) Admitted Patient Care curated by National Health Service (NHS) Digital. / Setting and participants: Adults accessing substance misuse treatment in England between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019 (n=268 251) were linked to inpatient hospitalisation records available since 1 April 1997. / Outcome measures: Using a gold-standard subset, linked using NHS number, we report the overall linkage sensitivity and precision. Predictors for linkage error were identified, and inverse probability weighting was used to interrogate any potential impact on the analysis of length of hospital stay. / Results: 79.7% (n=213 814) people were linked to at least one HES record, with an estimated overall sensitivity of between 82.5% and 83.3%, and a precision of between 90.3% and 96.4%. Individuals were more likely to link if they were women, white and aged between 46 and 60. Linked individuals were more likely to have an average length of hospital stay ≥5 days if they were men, older, had no fixed residential address or had problematic opioid use. These associations did not change substantially after probability weighting, suggesting they were not affected by bias from linkage error. / Conclusions: Linkage between substance misuse treatment and hospitalisation records offers a powerful new tool to evaluate the impact of treatment on substance related harm in England. While linkage error can produce misleading results, linkage bias appears to have little effect on the association between substance misuse treatment and length of hospital admission. As subsequent analyses are conducted, potential biases associated with the linkage process should be considered in the interpretation of any findings.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | National administrative record linkage between specialist community drug and alcohol treatment data (the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS)) and inpatient hospitalisation data (Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)) in England: design, method and evaluation |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043540 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-043540 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10116323 |
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