This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.

This Handbook intends to inform Data Providers and researchers on how to provide privacy-protected access to, handle, and analyze administrative data, and to link them with existing resources, such as a database of data use agreements (DUA) and templates. Available publicly, the Handbook will provide guidance on data access requirements and procedures, data privacy, data security, property rights, regulations for public data use, data architecture, data use and storage, cost structure and recovery, ethics and privacy-protection, making data accessible for research, and dissemination for restricted access use. The knowledge base will serve as a resource for all researchers looking to work with administrative data and for Data Providers looking to make such data available.