Veteran Affairs Hospital Co-Ordering Rates for ESR and hs-CRP Tests

A retrospective study of laboratory test ordering practices at the Northern California Veteran Affairs Hospital System over twelve months. The data likely contains rates of simultaneous ordering for Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) and high-sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hs-CRP) assays before and after educational and advisory interventions. The dataset was authored by Luke Valencia and shared under a CC-BY-4.0 license on figshare.

Use Cases

• Analyze the correlation between ESR and hs-CRP ordering based on the reported significant correlation between the two assays.
• Evaluate the impact of best practice advisories and education on co-ordering habits based on the reported 34% decrease.
• Compare intervention effectiveness across departments based on the described largest decrease of more than 56%.
• Model baseline co-ordering rates for similar healthcare systems based on the reported initial rate of approximately 72%.

Strengths

• Includes specific, reported metrics such as a 72% initial co-ordering rate and a 34% decrease post-intervention.
• Covers a defined twelve-month study period within a specific healthcare system.
• Results are supported by reported statistical significance (p-values of 0.00036, 0.0003, and 0.0042).

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is very small (91.0 KB), suggesting limited scope or summary-level data.

Provenance

Source

Northern California Veteran Affairs Hospital System

Collection Method

Retrospective study of laboratory test orders.

Time Range

Twelve-month period (specific dates unknown).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-22 05:45:41; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northern California, USA.