Many military health care providers (including most dental providers)
depend on self-reported health questionnaires for critical information
about their patients' medical history. These questionnaires demand hi
gh standards of patient self-awareness and integrity, and their import
ance justifies checking their accuracy. The authors checked the accura
cy of 155 self-reported health histories by comparing them with histor
ies documented in medical records. Although we found some discrepancie
s, over 95% of our sample showed reasonable agreement between self-rep
orted medical histories and documented medical histories.