Use of administrative data to increase the practicality of clinical trials: Insights from the Women's Health Initiative.

Background: To reduce research costs in the context of pragmatic trials, consideration is given to using administrative data (Medicare claims) to ascertain clinical outcomes.
Methods: In the historical context of the Women's Health Initiative, the correspondence between selected cardiovascular events derived from Medicare claims was compared to those documented and adjudicated in this large-scale prevention trial.
Results: Classification performance varies somewhat by type of outcome, but hazard ratios and confidence intervals derived from the two data sources were quite comparable.
Conclusion: These encouraging results provided the needed support to launch a new embedded pragmatic trial of physical activity that will rely heavily on Medicare claims to ascertain cardiovascular disease incidence in the majority of those randomized.
(© The Author(s) 2016.)