My admit and discharge dates are currently dates, I have another data set (emergency department data) that I need to do the same duplicate deletion on where the they are datetimes but I was planning on creating a new variable with datepart so that the coding is the same for both data sets. In your three day example both day 2 and day 3 would be considered the same event as the event that occurred on day 1. Mock data: obs medrec_no first_nm last_nm sex event_code admit_dt discharge_dt 1 000000001 John Smith 0 9925 04/15/2011 04/16/2011 2 000000001 John Smith 0 9925 04/16/2011 04/20/2011 3 000000001 John Smith 0 9924 04/23/2011 04/24/2011 4 000000002 Jane Wilson 1 9920 05/12/2011 05/13/2011 5 000000002 Jane Wilson 1 9920 05/16/2011 05/16/2011 6 000000003 Chris Griffin 0 9923 06/04/2011 06/04/2011 7 000000003 Chris Griffin 0 9923 06/05/2011 06/08/2011 8 000000003 Chris Griffin 0 9923 06/08/2011 06/09/2011 9 000000002 Jane Wilson 1 9920 08/02/2011 08/03/2011 ...... So in the above example I would want to delete obs 2, 5, 7, & 8. Basically the duration of hospitalization is unimportant for my analysis. I am trying to eventually look at the count and rate of the event allowing some readmission (readmission after 2 days) to be considered as separate events. Thanks!
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