A review of hospital medical record audits: implications for funding and training

This paper summarises the findings of coding audits in seven hospitals and one re-audit conducted by the Health Department of Western Australia. The accuracy of the coding in the first audits, as measured by differences in AN-DRG assignment, varied from 83% to 93%. The accuracy of the coding in the re-audited hospital increased by 6% to 94.5%. The major coding problems related to incorrect abstraction of information from the medical record, inaccurate code assignment, non-application of the Australian Coding Standards, or poor documentation. On average, these coding problems resulted in a loss of nearly $400,000 per hospital per year in the surveyed hospitals.