HOW ACCURATE IS A COMPUTERIZED SURGICAL AUDIT WHEN RESIDENT MEDICAL STAFF COLLECT THE DATA?

Since July 1988 all eight general surgeons at Fremantle Hospital have used a computer‐based surgical audit and discharge system. At the time of writing (September 1991) 10919 computer‐generated discharge letters have been produced by the system.This paper describes the system and reports a series of quality control assessments carried out between 1 July 1988 and 30 June 1990 during which 30 pre‐registration surgical residents completed 5716 data collection forms. It was found that:(1) data collection for 23 of 24 monthly surgical audits was at least 95% complete;(2) outstanding surgical discharge summaries were reduced by 89%;(3) the residents recorded 17/19 wound infections and identified 15 (79%) of these as a surgical complication; and(4) the residents tended to under‐record complications in patients who had more than one complication during their hospital stay.It was concluded that the system was robust, and that resident staff collected data in such a way that good quality computer‐generated discharge letters were produced in a timely manner. Closer attention to aspects of data collection will be required before the optimum surgical audits of the QX system can be generated.

HOW ACCURATE IS A COMPUTERIZED SURGICAL AUDIT WHEN RESIDENT MEDICAL STAFF COLLECT THE DATA? Journal Articles