Estimation of Delirium Data Completeness

Currently physicians and nurses rely on their own clinical skills and experience to diagnose and record 'delirium' in the Electronic Health Records (EHR). This study aims to determine how delirium as a diagnosis is documented by clinicians in the EHR at Hadassah Hospital. The knowledge gained from this study will support the design of a better surveillance approach to monitoring delirium events in postoperative patients using electronic healthcare recorded data. There is considerable uncertainty surrounding the quality of 'delirium' records in the Electronic Health Records (EHR). The reliability of this chart estimation has become questionable in the absence of an objective definition of 'delirium' and a lack of highly accurate diagnostic tools in the hospital setting. Given the difficulty of accurately identifying delirium and the deficiency in the quality of EHR documentation, it is not surprising that delirium is grossly underestimated, undertreated, not properly recorded in the EHR or misreported. Data concordance plays a major role in documentation quality, especially for data-mining and knowledge extraction analysis, and therefore it is essential to address the reliability of 'delirium' labeled data within the EHR system.