| National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS) | Captures emergency room visit data in Alberta Emergency room data are abstracted in a standardised fashion by trained data extractors Includes up to 10 diagnostic fields National database allows for interprovincial comparisons Quality control by the Canadian Institute for Health Information
| Not mandatory for all outpatient visit data to be submitted in Alberta, therefore outpatient visits may be missed Unstandardised data capture and coding for outpatient visits may lead to missing data and makes analysis and interpretation difficult No reconciliation with Physician claims database
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| Discharge Abstract Database | Captures acute care facility discharges in the province National database allows for interprovincial comparisons Quality control by the Canadian Institute for Health Information
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| Diagnostic imaging | | |
| Alberta Health Services Labs | | Use of 3 different systems across the province making province-wide analysis difficult Labs taken using beside instruments may not flow into administrative databases Heavy use of free text fields making analysis difficult without proper cleaning and data analytic skills
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| Physician claims | Captures data on emergency, community and in-hospital physician services provided across the province Captures all services provided by fee-for-service physicians and some services provided by physicians on alternative payment plans (ie, shadow billed claims)
| Does not capture all visits as shadow bill submissions by alternative payment plan physicians to Provincial Health Authority varies by clinic No reconciliation with the NACRS database makes the identifcation of duplicate data challenging Only up to three diagnostic codes are captured, with only one being mandatory for outpatient visits, therefore not all conditions treated within a visit may be captured Unspecific billing codes used (eg, general follow-up) Variation in coding practice among physicians
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| Pharmaceutical Information Network | Captures prescription dispenses from community pharmacies Includes information such as drug dispense date and drug information details (eg, drug identification number).
| Does not capture in-hospital medication dispenses or whether medication was taken by the patient Cannot make conclusions about physicians prescribing patterns as unfilled prescriptions are not captured
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| Sunrise Clinical Manager | | Provincial Health Authorities warn that there is variation in use and therefore this data source must be used with caution.13 Trauma room may not be captured Not used across the province Heavy use of free text fields requiring advanced and resource-intensive analytical skills Contains both tasks that were performed and tasks that were ordered but not performed (eg, medications)
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| eClinician electronic medical record | | Variation in coding behaviours across clinics Unclear dataflow and mapping from bedside entry to extracted databases Incomplete data capture in some fields. May reflect variation in use across clinics Multiple fields capture similar information (eg, problem list vs encounter table) Not used across the province
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