RELIABILITY OF THE RECORDING OF HYSTERECTOMY IN THE SASKATCHEWAN HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM

Objective To determine the validity of data pertaining to hysterectomy in the Saskatchewan health care utilisation datafiles. Design Retrosp ective analysis of routinely collected data covering hospital discharg e records and practitioner claims for reimbursement of services, toget her with a review of clinical charts. Setting Province of Saskatchewan , Canada. Sample All 1905 cases of hysterectomy in one calendar year f or analysis of datafiles and a random sample of 227 clinical charts fo r review. Method Information in the hospitalisation datafile was valid ated through an external comparison with data extracted from a review of clinical charts, as well as an internal comparison with independent data from the practitioner claims file. Corresponding context data on drug use and performance of related procedures were also analysed. Re sults Concordance between hospital data and clinical charts was greate r than 95% for those items of an administrative nature as well as type of hysterectomy and was around 85% for the diagnoses. When hospitalis ation and practitioner claims data were compared, the concordance was 98% for type of hysterectomy but only 56% for diagnoses. Conclusions T he agreement between hospital data and clinical charts was excellent. The concordance between hospitalisation and practitioner claims data w as almost exact for type of hysterectomy, while discrepancies in diagn oses between these files were mostly explainable on the basis of accep ted clinical practice. Saskatchewan health care utilisation datafiles provide a source of valid data for research and evaluation studies.