• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.60-68
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• 1997

Background : Medical records are used to assess clinical performance of physicians and quality of care. The contents which are written in medical records are considered as the objective evidences to know what the doctors think about the patient's problems. But the problem to use medical records as the assessment tools is the incompleteness of medical recording. The purpose of this study is to know if the completeness of medical recording is correlated to quality of care for inpattients and it can predict physicians's quality of care. Method : 32 clinical physicians reviewed 200 patients' medical records who were selected randomly from the inpatients who were admitted to the university hospital during July, 1995 and June, 1996. The reviewers used the structured evaluation questionnaires which were composed of two part. One part evaluated the completeness of the medical recording and the other evaluating appropriateness of diagnosis and treatment processes. We summated the scores of each items and calculated percentile scores. Results : The mean percentile score of completeness of the medical recording was 67.9% in 1995 and 79.8% in 1996. The mean percentile score of appropriateness was 52.2% in 1995 and 69.5% in 1996. This change between 1995 and 1996 was statistically significant. In non-surgical patients, the percentile scores of the completeness and those of the appropriateness were correlated positively and this correlation was statistically significant(p<0.05). In surgical patients, the positve correlation between the completeness and the appropriateness was also statistically significant(p<0.05). Discussion : In conclusion, the completeness of medical recording is considered as the good predictor of the quality of care for inpatients.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.174-183
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• 1997

Background : Medical records thought to be reflecting the quality of medicine. By this ground, examination of medical records can be served to evaluate, and to improve the quality of medical care. To examine the medical records, we need some standards or checklists which can be used to sort out the problems. Methods: We developed checklists for medical records evaluation. We studied 1,677 medical records about its completeness using this checklists in one educational hospital. Survey was completed by 5 well trained staffs of medical record department. Results are analyzed. SPSS/PC+ program was used for statistics. Results : 13.8% of discharge summary was incomplete. Recording of the demographic information was also poor in incomplete medical records compared to complete ones. Progress note was recorded average 4.16 times during 11.9 hospital days. After 4th hospital day, recording rate of progress note dropped sharply. Rate of professor's signature on operation records was poor(27%). He or she who described the discharge summary well also wrote progress note well. Conclusions: Fill-up of demographic date should be stressed during medical record education program. Strategy to create the environment emphasizing the responsibility of professor on quality medical record should be made. We suggest new index (number of records/hospital stay) for the evaluation of completeness of progress note.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.42-64
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• 2008

This study was conducted to evaluate the quality in medical records by analyzing its completeness through setting up the level of record on the patient's past history and through examining the actual medial records. Targeting the information on the patient's past history in interns' records, residents' records and nurses' records toward 403 inpatients who were admitted first in 2004 at an university hospital due to stomach cancer. We analyzed whether the charts were recorded or not, recording level, the satisfaction with the expectant level of the records in the hospital targeted for a research and the level of agreement. The results were as follows; first, as for the rate of recording those each items, they were high in the chief complaint & present illness and the past illness history. Depending on the group of recorders, the recording rate showed big difference by items. Second, as a result of measuring the level after dividing the recording level of items for the patient's past history from Level 1 to Level 4 by each item, the admission history, the past illness history, and the family history were about Level 3, and the smoking history, the medication history, the chief complaint & present illness, the drinking history and allergy were about Level 2. In the admission department, it was excellent in the interns' records for the medical department. Third, as a result of its satisfactory level by comparing the expect level of a record and the actual record by item in information on the patient's past history, which was expected by the medical-record committee members of the hospital targeted for a study. And forth, we analyzed the level of agreement with Kappa score in the level of 'Yes' or 'None' related to the corresponding matter in Level 1, in terms of information on the past history in the intern's record, the resident's record, and the nurse's record. The level of agreement in the resident's record & the nurse's record, and in the intern's record & the resident's record was from "excellent" to "a little good". There were differences in the level of completeness and in reliability for the information on the past history by the recorder group or by the admission department. The encounter process that was performed by the admission department or the recorder group, indicated the result that was directly reflected on the quality of medical records, thus it was required further study about the medical record documentation process and quality of care. The items that showed the high recording rate quantitatively were rather low, consequently we'd should develop the tool for the qualitative inspection and evaluate the medical records further. And the items were needed to be detailed in the record level were rather low, and hence there needed to be a documentation guideline and education by the clinical departments.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.13
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• pp.5549-5556
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• 2015

Background: Cancer has important social consequences with cancer registration as the basis of moving towards prevention. The present study aimed to estimate the completeness of registration of the ten most common cancers in patients referred to selected hospitals in Shiraz, Iran by using capture-recapture method. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was performed in 2014 based on the data of 2009, on a total of 4,388 registered cancer patients. After cleaning data from two sources, using capture-recapture common findings were identified. Then, the percentage of the completeness of cancer registration was estimated using Chapman and Chao methods. Finally, the effects of demographic and treatment variables on the completeness of cancer registration were investigated. Results: The results showed that the percentages of completeness of cancer registration in the selected hospitals of Shiraz were 58.6% and 58.4%, and influenced by different variables. The age group between 40-49 years old was the highest represented and for the age group under 20 years old was the lowest for cancer registration. Breast cancer had the highest registration level and after that, thyroid and lung cancers, while colorectal cancer had the lowest registration level. Conclusions: According to the results, the number of cancers registered was very few and it seems that factors like inadequate knowledge of some doctors, imprecise diagnosis about the types of cancer, incorrectly filled out medical documents, and lack of sufficient accuracy in recording data on the computer cause errors and defects in cancer registration. This suggests a necessity to educate and teach doctors and other medical workers about the methods of documenting information related to cancer and also conduct additional measures to improve the cancer registration system.