A proposal for improving the acquisition of medical data in forward field hospitals

Current medical recording policy in forward field hospitals adequately delineates battle and non-battle injuries and incapacitation from sickness or disease. Although useful for planning, such data do not often provide insights that could improve medical care. The author has gathered combat medical data in Vietnam and Desert Storm and concludes that by providing and storing carbon copies of admission and operating room logs plus operative notes, discharge summaries, and the clinical record cover sheet, the Army Medical Corps would have a permanent, analyzable account of field hospital medical activities. Digital copying and disk storage of these specific documents would greatly increase their usefulness, especially if coupled with standard data formats for admission and operating logs and a simple diagnosis coding scheme to aid data retrieval either by hand or computer. Medical data should be made available to concerned forward medical personnel because in past wars some of the most insightful medical observations of immediate help to the sick and wounded have been made by individual physicians analyzing medical data at the front.