Accuracy and Usefulness of the HEDIS Childhood Immunization Measures Pediatrics, 04/13/2012

Bundy DG et al. – Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) childhood immunization measures are, on the whole, accurate and useful. Certain immunizations (eg, hepatitis B, pneumococcal conjugate) and children (eg, those with a single overdue immunization), however, are more prone to HEDIS misclassification.

• For children aged 24 to 35 months from the 2009 National Immunization Survey, they assessed the accuracy and usefulness of the HEDIS childhood immunization measures for 6 individual immunizations and a composite.

• A total of 12096 children met all inclusion criteria and composed the study sample.
• The HEDIS measures had >90% accuracy when compared with the CDC gold standard for each of the 6 immunizations (range, 94.3%–99.7%) and the composite (93.8%).
• The HEDIS measure was least accurate for hepatitis B and pneumococcal conjugate immunizations.
• The proportion of children for which the HEDIS measure yielded a nonuseful result (ie, an incorrect answer to the question, “is this child due for catch-up immunization”) ranged from 0.33% (varicella) to 5.96% (pneumococcal conjugate).
• The most important predictor of HEDIS measure accuracy and usefulness was the CDC-recommended number of immunizations due at age 2 years; children with zero or all immunizations due were the most likely to be correctly classified.