Assessing the concordance of trauma registry data and hospital records

This study examined the concordance of trauma registry and hospital records in Queensland in 1998. The design involved a retrospective review of records and documentation comparison. Demographic variables from the registry were matched to hospital data to obtain admission/diagnoses data. There were four main types of error identified which included: failure to identify relevant patients, inappropriate inclusion of patients, insufficient/inaccurate data in hospital records, and insufficient/inaccurate data in the trauma registry. Of the 87 cases with data quality issues, 63% were due to Queensland Trauma Registry (QTR) data errors, 5% were due to hospital data errors, and in 32% of cases the source of errors was undetermined. Of the potential 1759 trauma cases from 1998, 12 cases should have been included in the registry that were not, 71 cases should not have been included in the registry, and 4 cases were removed from the study due to insufficient or inaccurate hospital record data. Overall, a concordance rate of approximately 95% was found between the trauma registry records and the hospital records.