Comparing name-based and event-based strategies for data linkage: a study linking hospital and residential aged care data for Western Australia

In a feasibility study carried out in 2001 and 2002, the Institute developed a strategy for linking the hospital morbidity and residential aged care databases using date of birth, sex, region of usual residence and event dates. Doubts concerning the efficacy of the linkage strategy were raised at the time because of the lack of either a name or a common person identifier on the two datasets. This paper refines the event-based strategy and confirms its utility by comparing it directly with a name-based linkage strategy.