Standardised measures needed for data quality

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7398.0-b

BMJ 2003;326 (17 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7398.0-b

Standardised measures needed for data quality

Quality measurement of electronic patient records in primarycare needs to be standardised. Thiru and colleagues (p 1070)conducted a systematic review of 52 publications on how dataquality in primary care is measured and reported. Most (92%)were concerned with patient identification data, and theirmeasurements varied. Reliability was typically measured throughrate comparisons, whereas validity was assessed through either sensitivity or predictive probabilities. The recording of diagnosticand prescription data tended to be better than that of othervariables. Until every practice is paperless and enters codeddata for every consultation, the authors recommend that setreference standards be used to determine completeness and accuracy.