Development of a Binational Clinical Registry for Emergency Care: Data Completeness Across 11 Australian and Aotearoa...

The primary aim of this project was to test the feasibility of collating valid and useful ED data to inform the future establishment of a binational (i.e., Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) clinical registry for emergency care. A secondary aim of this project was to utilise multi-site ED data to assess the crude impact of COVID-19 restrictions on overall ED presentations.

This was a retrospective observational study using data routinely collected by EDs. The inclusion criteria were all patients presenting to participating EDs between 2017 and 2020. The primary outcome was data completeness. The secondary outcome was the number of ED presentations. Variables for which there was at least 80% data completeness across all participating sites were eligible for simple demonstrations of multi-jurisdictional analyses.

There were data for 11 ED networks and 4,405,762 ED presentations. There were just nine variables which met the 80% completeness cutoff: network and site identification, birthdate, gender, First Nations self-identification, ED arrival date and time, ED arrival mode, triage category, ED triage date and time. Compared to the expected number of overall annual ED presentations, there was a reduction of 16% (95% CI 14% to 17%) in the actual number of overall ED presentations in 2020.

Data completeness for routinely collected data collated from multiple sites was satisfactory for just a small number of variables. These findings inform the opportunities and challenges to establishing a binational clinical registry for emergency care.