Accuracy and validation of an automated electronic algorithm to identify patients with atrial fibrillation at risk for stroke

Automated methods can be used to identify patients with prevalent AF indicated for anticoagulation but may have misclassification up to 12%, which limits the utility of relying on administrative data alone for quality assessment. Misclassification is minimized by requiring comorbidity diagnoses within the prior year and using a CHA2DS2-Vasc based algorithm. Despite differences in accuracy between algorithms, system-wide anticoagulation rates assessed were similar regardless of algorithm used.