A new AHRQ study demonstrated that indexes based on structured data from electronic health records (EHRs) can be used by healthcare providers to identify patients who are frail. Research has shown that frailty increases a person’s risk for functional impairment, cognitive decline, hospitalization and institutionalization. Identifying frailty and functional disability helps inform clinical care, risk-adjustment in patient-centered outcomes research, and evaluation of performance and payments in value-based care programs. In recent years, multiple frailty indexes based on insurance claims have been developed. However, healthcare providers often lack access to the insurance claims records of their entire patient population, thus necessitating the development of reliable EHR-based frailty indexes. AHRQ’s study provides a systematic approach for health systems to examine EHR data quality and prepare it for the application of EHR-based frailty measures.
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