UK Renal Registry

ILD90

Renal replacement therapy (RRT) is a medical treatment that replaces kidney function in patients with acute or chronic kidney failure. Over 50% of patients on RRT are comorbid (have more than one illness at the same time) and these comorbidities are associated with hospitalisation, reduced quality of life and mortality. Renal Registries such as the UK Renal Registry (UKRR) play a key role in assessing quality of care and outcomes of RRT. It is therefore important that when comparing outcomes between groups of patients, data is adjusted for case-mix including comorbidities. Case-mix adjustment is a process during data analysis to adjust for differences in patient characteristics and allow fairer comparisons. About 50% of comorbidities are missing in UKRR data making case-mix adjustment for comorbidities impossible. Incomplete or inaccurate comorbidity data will results in bias, so robust methods of collecting comorbidity are needed. Use of routine healthcare data and data linkage can potentially provide a solution to the missing comorbidity data, but the accuracy of this data has not been established. This work will compare comorbidities data collected in the UKRR for patients that started RRT in England and Wales with comorbidities data derived from routine healthcare data (HES) in England and Wales. We will also identify factors associated with non-linkage of patients with hospital data. The UKRR comorbidities data will also be compared with comorbidities data collected by the ATTOM study. These data comparisons will include around 6,000 RRT patients. The study will provide information on whether the use of HES data is complete and accurate enough to potentially provide a solution to the missing comorbidity data in registries such as the UKRR.