Understanding Differences in Administrative and Audited Patient Data in Cardiac Surgery: Comparison of the University HealthSystem Consortium and Society of Thoracic Surgeons Databases

In comparing the 2 databases, we found similarity in patient demographic information and percentage of patients with comorbidities. The small difference in volumes of each operation type and the larger disparity in postoperative complications between the databases were related to differences in data definition, data collection, and coding errors.