ECHO: The Western Australia emergency care hospitalisation and outcome linked data project

Abstract

Objective: To describe and assess the quality of the data resources linked for the Western Australian Emergency Care Hospitalisation and Outcome (ECHO) project. Methods: The ECHO project links electronic records from the WA Emergency Department Information System to the St John Ambulance Service Pre-Hospital Care Database, the WA Hospital Morbidity Data System and the WA Mortality Database. Linkages are created using standard probabilistic matching techniques with extensive clerical review. Commencing with all metropolitan Perth public emergency departments from July 2000, these linkages will be updated annually for at least five successive years. The proportion of actual linkages between em..