Data Discrepancies Between the Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System-Hearing Conservation and Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System-Data Repository

Permanent threshold shifts (PTS) are one of the key indicators used in hearing conservation to monitor program effectiveness. Across the Department of Defense, individual hearing test records are collected and maintained using the Defense Occupational and Environmental Health Readiness System-Data Repository (DOEHRS-DR). DOEHRS-DR reports are not widely used in the Air Force for program evaluation purposes, due in part to the understanding that not all base level records exported to the DOEHRS-DR are received. When this happens, it causes a discrepancy in the PTS rate local level compared to the DOEHRS-DR database level. Investigation revealed that this can be caused by interruptions during data export, incomplete or blank fields, or use of an incorrect reference audiogram. To mitigate these issues, it is recommended that public health technicians ensure all testing forms are filled out completely and correctly and that demographic information downloaded from DOEHRS-DR is still correct for the individual prior to testing. Since the capture of exported records continues to influence the PTS rates in the DR, ongoing confirmation that files exported to DOEHRS-DR are uploaded successfully is warranted.