I. Maistrello et al., THE MULTIPURPOSE SURVEILLANCE-ORIENTED MEDICAL RECORD - A TOOL FOR QUALITY OF CARE MANAGEMENT, International journal for quality in health care, 7(4), 1995, pp. 399-405
Medical records were oriented towards quality of care surveillance by
adding dedicated sections to the progress notes in which to list admis
sion problems, medical interventions and adverse events (AEs), Two typ
es of simple code were used: indication codes, which identify the indi
cation for any given medical intervention; and attribution codes, whic
h indicate the causes of any AE. During the first 6 months (302 patien
ts), 24 AEs were attributed to drugs, three to procedures, and 42 were
unexplained, The incidence of 7.9 suspected adverse drug reactions pe
r 100 patients exceeds that obtained with other hospital-based adverse
drug reporting programmes, Unexplained events are kept under constant
statistical control to detect possible alerting signals, As a tool fo
r quality of care management, the surveillance-oriented record can be
used to monitor the appropriateness of medical interventions, identify
''high risk'' areas and deduce outcome indicators which constitute us
eful screens for the identification of potential problems.