{"doi":"10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad040","title":"Procurement of patient medical records from multiple health care facilities for public health research: feasibility, challenges, and lessons learned","abstract":"Objectives: Studies that combine medical record and primary data are typically conducted in a small number of health care facilities (HCFs) covering a limited catchment area; however, depending on the study objectives, validity may be improved by recruiting a more expansive sample of patients receiving care across multiple HCFs. We evaluate the feasibility of a novel protocol to obtain patient medical records from multiple HCFs using a broad representative sampling frame. Materials and Methods: In a prospective cohort study on HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis utilization, primary data were collected from a representative sample of community-dwelling participants; voluntary authorization was obtained to access participants' medical records from the HCF at which they were receiving care. Medical record procurement procedures were documented for later analysis. Results: The cohort consisted of 460 participants receiving care from 122 HCFs; 81 participants were lost to follow-up resulting in 379 requests for medical records submitted to HCFs, and a total of 343 medical records were obtained (91% response rate). Less than 20% of the medical records received were in electronic form. On average, the cost of medical record acquisition was $120 USD per medical record. Conclusions: Obtaining medical record data on research participants receiving care across multiple HCFs was feasible, but time-consuming and resulted in appreciable missing data. Researchers combining primary data with medical record data should select a sampling and data collection approach that optimizes study validity while weighing the potential benefits (more representative sample; inclusion of HCF-level predictors) and drawbacks (cost, missing data) of obtaining medical records from multiple HCFs.","journal":"JAMIA Open","year":2023,"id":408554,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9267,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":787318,"name":"Judith Brasch","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":787319,"name":"Eric J. Podsiadly","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":787314,"name":"Leilani Torres","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":787315,"name":"Robert Quiles","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1187778,"name":"Evette Ramos","orcid":"0009-0003-3131-7879","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1187779,"name":"Hugh F. Crean","orcid":"0000-0001-7292-7700","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":299052,"name":"Jessica E. Haberer","orcid":"0000-0001-5845-3190","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":714282,"name":"James M. McMahon","orcid":"0000-0003-4707-5141","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":21,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:18.414003Z","pmid":"37323540","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}