An improved system for reporting congenital malformations

To improve the system of reporting congenital malformations on the birth certificates of newborns, we initiated the following procedural changes at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in 1981: (1) transference of the responsibility of reporting congenital malformations from the mother's physician to the newborn's physician; (2) development of a congenital malformation reporting sheet included in each newborn's file; and (3) appointment of a centralized single hospital medical records person to review the files and to complete the birth certificate. For 4949 births in 1982, the results of these changes were reviewed retrospectively and compared with those of a previous study at the institution. This system markedly improved the overall completeness of reporting while it identified inaccurate reporting of some malformations, incomplete reporting of multiple malformations, and the reporting of nonmalformations as congenital malformations.