Missed Opportunities for Chronic Kidney Disease Recognition in Irish Primary Care: A Nationwide Electronic Health Record Study

In a nationwide cohort of 592,888 Irish primary care patients, only 14.6% of 19,382 adults with laboratory-confirmed CKD had a documented diagnosis code.

• Why it matters: Laboratory evidence of CKD is not being consistently translated into coded diagnoses in primary care, risking missed recognition and delayed intervention.
• What they did: Using retrospective EHR data from 66 practices, adults aged ≥20 meeting laboratory-based CKD criteria were identified, and CKD coding was defined by ICD-10 or ICPC-2 diagnosis codes.
• The result: Coding rose with severity (4.8% in stages 1–2 to 19.6% in stages 3–5), remained absent for 85.4% over follow-up, and showed practice variation (34/61 below 10%, four above 40%).

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