FREQUENCY OF ERRORS IN ICD CODING IN RELA TION TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REGULATIONS FOR NURSING PERSONNEL PROVISIONS AS PRESCRIBED IN THE (GERMAN-FEDERAL-GOVERNMENTS) HEALTH-ORGANIZATION LAW

Since 1 January, 1993, it has been a legal requirement to enter, for i dentification of the main diagnosis, the appropriate code from the Int ernational Classification of Diseases (ICD) on the documentation forms of the Nursing Personnel Regulation as prescribed under the (German F ederal Government's) Health Organization Law. This study was undertake n to analyse the frequency of errors in this coding and the reasons fo r it. The data of the Nursing, Personnel Regulations during the first 6 months of 1993 were compared with the corresponding entries in the d iagnostic archives. In 671 of 2308 analysed forms (29%) coding errors were discovered. The rate of errors was especially high in the areas o f cardiology (39%), angiology (37%), nephrology (36%) and neurology (3 5%). However, a high percentage of the wrong codings for cardiological and nephrological diseases were still within the same diagnostic fiel d. - These findings indicate that, to ensure quality, those doctors wh o do the coding should be fully informed about the potential consequen ces regarding staffing of such errors. All coding must be done by expe rienced doctors, be locally checked and, if technically possible compa red with the diagnostic archive entries. Also, the registration of onl y one main diagnosis is not sensible in the case of patients with mult i-organ disease.