CIHI clarification on abortion statistics

Last week I posted abortion statistics from OHIP records for 2010.

I noted the discrepancy between this FOI information I received, and what CIHI published for 2009. (My FOI asked for 2010, but CIHI hadn't published 2010 yet, so I made some general comparisons to previous years 2009, 2008, and 2007).

OHIP records showed at least 31% more abortions than what CIHI typically reports.

So I decided to ask CIHI if they could explain this discrepency.

This is what CIHI told me:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. As you know, CIHI just took over reporting on induced abortions from Statistics Canada last year. We are committed to improving the data quality, and have already made strides in areas such as increased accuracy regarding abortion methods and the number of complications associated with in-hospital procedures. We’ve also expanded coverage as a whole.

Currently, our Ontario data on abortion comes from hospitals and clinics. Hospital-based abortions are from administrative data and represent actual number of procedures; they are not based on OHIP billing data. In the case of clinics, we receive records from the provincial ministry that are based on OHIP data. They are for the two billing codes—S752 and S785—that most accurately reflect the scope of our induced abortion database.

We are investigating the information you have provided in order to better understand the discrepancies, and will continue to incorporate any information which will improve our data quality."

I've asked CIHI for some further clarification. I'll keep you posted.