Identifying Provider Counseling Practices Using Natural Language Processing: Gout Example

National guidelines for a number of health conditions recommend that practitioners assess and reinforce patient's adherence to specific diet and lifestyle modifications. Counseling intervention has shown to have a long-term positive effect on patient adherence but the extent to which physicians comply is unknown. Evidence of counseling provided by practitioner is recorded only as free text in electronic medical records. To identify physicians' counseling practices we developed a natural language processing system to detect text documentation of dietary counseling in gout patients.