Paediatric acute care cardiology collaborative data registry validation.

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Health Informatics
• Clinical Data Management

Background:

• The Pediatric Acute Care Cardiology Collaborative (PAC³) aimed to enhance pediatric acute care cardiology outcomes via a validated clinical registry.
• This study reports on the validation of initial PAC³ registry audits and introduces a novel regional audit format.
• The audit format was adapted for expanding membership, collaborative learning, and COVID-19 pandemic modifications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate the accuracy of the PAC³ clinical registry through comprehensive audits.
• To assess the effectiveness of a novel regional audit format and virtual audits.
• To confirm the registry's suitability for quality improvement, benchmarking, and research.

Main Methods:

• Nine hospitals participated in the audit process, utilizing both regional and virtual audit formats.
• Audits focused on critical and challenging data elements within at least 40 randomly selected patient cases per hospital.
• Discrepancies were categorized as major or minor, with results tabulated and reported.

Main Results:

• A total of 386 encounters and 27,086 data fields were audited across nine hospitals.
• The aggregate overall accuracy rate was 99.27%, with a major discrepancy rate of 0.51%.
• Accuracy rates ranged from 98.77% to 99.59%, and major discrepancy rates from 0.26% to 0.88%; no significant difference was observed between audit formats.

Conclusions:

• The PAC³ registry is a highly accurate data source, suitable for quality improvement, benchmarking, and research.
• Both regional and virtual audit methodologies were successfully implemented and viewed favorably by participants.
• The findings support the reliability of the PAC³ registry for advancing pediatric acute care cardiology.