A Method for Developing Data Quality Measures and Metrics for Primary Health Care

Abstract

The secondary use of primary care data has many potential applications. By using data from a local primary care organization, a method for developing data quality measures and metrics in primary care is presented as a case study. The method that was created included an exploratory meeting with a subject matter expert, the creation of a first draft of measures with the information management team, the discussion of the proposed measures with a focus group and a final data quality report encompassing all the collected feedback. The method was used to create rules and formulae to measures timeliness, completeness, accuracy and usefulness in the primary care ecosystem. Future work will involve completing a detailed quantitative analysis of the data quality measures calculated with the proposed metrics. In the future these measures can be broken down and compared on a monthly, professional and users basis to provide insight into the behavior and nuance of data quality in primary care.