357 On the completeness of medical records of patients with oral health records at three CTSA CORES Institutions: Iowa, Kentucky, and Utah

Abstract

Objectives/Goals: Oral health is an important and understudied part of overall health. Poor oral health is linked to many systemic conditions, but little has been done to explore these issues in large electronic health records data sources that include dental health records. Here we report on our exploration of data readiness and completeness of three of these data sources in the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) network. Methods/Study Population: Three CTSAs from the Consortium of Rural States (CORES) with diverse geographies, demographics, and data ecosystems can integrate medical and dental records, but it is unknown if the target population having both dental and medical records have sufficient completeness and similarity to enable dental/medical health studies. Here we use descriptive analytics to characterize the demographics, and the “complete data” approach presented by Weber et al. to evaluate differences between the completeness of the general populations and the one having both dental/medical records. We accomplish this by identifying patients with dental records in commonly used research networks and performing empirical patient statistics in comparison to the entire population available at the three institutions. Results/Anticipated Results: This poster will present the results of using the Weber et al. approach to compare the completeness of records of the general patient population in the Iowa, Kentucky, and Utah medical/dental health care systems to those for which they have also dental records. The completeness of the records of these two subpopulations is also associated with different demographic characteristics, as it has been established that the populations served by the dental clinics is biased by dental insurance considerations. The work will show what retrospective studies can (or not) be done using these populations when taking into account that it is well established that studies of populations with different level of completeness can be inconsistent. Discussion/Significance of Impact: This study provides an informatics framework to assess similarity and completeness of patient records with and without dental records. Establishing the level of similarity and completeness in these patient populations is critical to justify the validity of studies that utilize a combined record.