Identifying musculoskeletal conditions in electronic medical records: a prevalence and validation study using the Deliver Primary Healthcare Information (DELPHI) database

Table 1 Characteristics of patients (n = 2493)

		Patients with Musculoskeletal Conditions^a (n = 1305)		Patients without Musculoskeletal Conditions (n = 1188)
		# Patients	% Patients	# Patients	% Patients	P value
Sex
	Males	583	44.7	523	44.0	.775
	Females	722	55.3	665	56.0
Age Group
	0–17	59	4.5	194	16.3	<.001
	18–44	262	20.1	337	28.4
	45–64	557	42.7	394	33.2
	65+	427	32.7	263	22.1
Age in years, mean and Standard Deviation		55.5	19.2	44.6	23.9	<.001
Location^b
	Urban	1012	78.9	891	76.9	.254
	Rural	270	21.1	267	23.1
	Missing	23		30

^aReference Standard for identifying patients with musculoskeletal conditions is if they had 1+ International Classification of Primary Care coded encounters with a diagnosis code for a musculoskeletal condition at any time in the database
^bPatient location measured using first three digits of postal code. Numeral of 0 = rural, and 1–9 = urban

ISSN: 1471-2474