[Emergency department discharge reports as a management tool of clinical information]

Our goal was to assess the degree of readability, quality and amount of information included in discharge reports of Emergency Departments (ED) in order to evaluate their usefulness for the management of clinical information.

Analysis of a sample of ED discharge reports from 6 Barcelona hospitals (Hospital General Vall d'Hebron, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Institut Municipal d'Assistència Sanitària [IMAS] hospitals, Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu). We assessed their readability together with the information included for the development of an ED Uniform Discharge Data Set (CMBDAU).

11,188 ED discharge reports were analyzed. Overall, 39% reports were found to have enough and readable information. However, the interpretation of the written information was deemed to be fairly difficult in 46% cases and very difficult in the remaining 15% reports.

Formal quality and comprehensiveness of the information included in ED discharge reports is a critical factor for the precision and usefulness of any registry of data and ED patients classification systems.