Reliability and Validity of the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol for Public Hospitals in Korea

This study was conducted to assess the applicability of the Appropriateness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) for public hospitals in Korea.

In May 2016, 1500 admission claims were collected from Korean public district hospitals using stratified random sampling. Of these claims, 560 admissions to 37 hospitals were retrieved for analysis. Medical records administrators determined the appropriateness of admission using the criteria detailed in the AEP, and a physician separately assessed the appropriateness of admission based on her clinical judgment. To examine the applicability of the AEP, the concordance of the decisions made between a pair of AEP reviewers and between an AEP reviewer and a physician reviewer was compared.

The results showed an almost perfect inter-rater agreement between the AEP reviewers and a moderate agreement between the AEP reviewers and the physician. The sensitivity and specificity of the AEP were calculated as 0.86 and 0.56, respectively.

Our findings suggest that the AEP could potentially be applied to Korean public hospitals as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing the appropriateness of admissions.