Summary report of the incidence and prevalence of worker injury and subsequent outcomes in British Columbia : a record linkage study ; HPRU 99:7D
Starting in June, 1997, the Workers' Compensation Board ofBC made available computerized records of all injured workers claims, from 1986 to 1996, to the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research. These files gave information on each successful claim: short-term disability, long-term disability (pension), fatality, or health care only, as well as the fact and date of all unsuccessful or incomplete claims. Using "personal identifier fields" from these files, staff at the Centre managed to "link" 97.2% of these claims to the BC Linked Health Database. The BC Linked Health Data set (BCLHD), developed under contract with the BC Ministry of Health, makes 6 key transaction files in the province "linkable" to one another for the purposes of research. These currently include: the birth file, the death file, Medical Services Plan claims file, hospital discharge file, long-term care client file, and the Pharmacare A plan file (i. e. the provincial drug payment plan for those BC residents over 65 years of age). All records in each file, going back to fiscal year 1985/86, have been encrypted with a scrambled Personal Health Number (PHN) which matches the (scrambled) PHN of a unique individual in the Linkage Co-ordinating File of those enrolled in the Medical Services Plan of BC. ; Health Care and Epidemiology, Department of ; Medicine, Faculty of ; Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of ; Unreviewed ; Faculty ; Researcher