Detection of Diabetes Status and Type in Youth Using Electronic Health Records: The SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study.

OBJECTIVE: Diabetes surveillance often requires manual medical chart reviews to confirm status and type. This project aimed to create an electronic health record (EHR)-based procedure for improving surveillance efficiency through automation of case identification.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Youth (<20 years old) with potential evidence of diabetes ( = 8,682) were identified from EHRs at three children's hospitals participating in the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study. True diabetes status/type was determined by manual chart reviews. Multinomial regression was compared with an ICD-10 rule-based algorithm in the ability to correctly identify diabetes status and type. Subsequently, the investigators evaluated a scenario of combining the rule-based algorithm with targeted chart reviews where the algorithm performed poorly.

RESULTS: The sample included 5,308 true cases (89.2% type 1 diabetes). The rule-based algorithm outperformed regression for overall accuracy (0.955 vs. 0.936). Type 1 diabetes was classified well by both methods: sensitivity () (>0.95), specificity () (>0.96), and positive predictive value (PPV) (>0.97). In contrast, the PPVs for type 2 diabetes were 0.642 and 0.778 for the rule-based algorithm and the multinomial regression, respectively. Combination of the rule-based method with chart reviews ( = 695, 7.9%) of persons predicted to have non-type 1 diabetes resulted in perfect PPV for the cases reviewed while increasing overall accuracy (0.983). The , , and PPV for type 2 diabetes using the combined method were ≥0.91.

CONCLUSIONS: An ICD-10 algorithm combined with targeted chart reviews accurately identified diabetes status/type and could be an attractive option for diabetes surveillance in youth.