Accuracy of the recording of operative events by the Scottish Morbidity Record 1 (SMR1) for a teaching hospital vascular unit

Objective: To determine the accuracy of operative data collected for the Sc ottish Morbidity Record 1 (SMR1), Design: Retrospective comparative analysi s of operative data recorded by the Scottish Office Information and Statist ics Division (ISD) with that recorded in a locally held vascular database w here the clinical information was entered by medical personnel. Subjects: A ll patients with a codeable operative procedure carried out under the care of a single consultant vascular surgeon in a Regional Vascular Unit in 1994 , Results: A total of 840 admissions involving at least one OPCS4 code were recorded in the Vascular Database and 793 by the Scottish Office ISD, Alth ough there was good agreement of the total number of operations and admissi ons, operative codes for 23 patients undergoing major abdominal aortic surg ery and 19 undergoing major limb reconstruction were not recorded by the IS D. This represents 14% of total major arterial reconstructions in a single year. Conclusion: Accurate data collection has wide implications for resear ch, monitoring future health trends, and planning hospital bed numbers, SMR 1 data may accurately record total number of admissions and operations but is poor at distinguishing between those admissions that may be resource-int ensive.