Automated patient linking for electronic health record and child welfare databases

Abstract

There are 427,000 children in protective custody in the United States. A lack of integration between the child welfare data system and electronic health record systems complicates the communication of critical health history details to caregivers. We created and evaluated automated 10 custom algorithms linking these data. Deterministic matching was performed using combinations of first and last name, date of birth, and gender. If unmatched, a nondeterministic algorithm allowed for punctuation differences and letter transpositions. Of the children linked deterministically, 91.3% were linked. Of the ones undergoing nondeterministic matching, 71.3% were linked. Sharing integrated data is the first step in systematically improving health outcomes for children in protective custody. This approach represents an automatable and scalable solution that could help merge data from two disparate sources.

Keywords:

• Medical informatics
• foster home care
• electronic health records
• automatic data processing

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank Katie Nause at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) and Kris Flinchum at Hamilton County Jobs and Family Services. This work was supported by internal grant funding from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, NIH R01LM012816-01, and NIDA 1K01DA041620-01A1.