Data on Data Systems Discussed by Researchers at South African Medical Research Council (Is the Routine Health Information System Ready To Support the Planned National Health Insurance Scheme In South Africa?): Information Technology – Data Systems

2022 FEB 11 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Information Technology Business Daily -- A new study on Information Technology - Data Systems is now available. According to news reporting from Cape Town, South Africa, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Implementation of a National Health Insurance (NHI) in South Africa requires a reliable, standardized health information system that supports Diagnosis-Related Groupers for reimbursements and resource management. We assessed the quality of inpatient health records, the availability of standard discharge summaries and coded clinical data and the congruence between inpatient health records and discharge summaries in public-sector hospitals to support the NHI implementation in terms of reimbursement and resource management.”

Funders for this research include SAMRC Intramural Research Fund, National Research Foundation (NRF).

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from South African Medical Research Council, “We undertook a cross-sectional health-records review from 45 representative public hospitals consisting of seven tertiary, 10 regional and 28 district hospitals in 10 NHI pilot districts representing all nine provinces. Data were abstracted from a randomly selected sample of 5795 inpatient health records from the surgical, medical, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics and psychiatry departments. Quality was assessed for 10 pre-defined data elements relevant to NHI reimbursements, by comparing information in source registers, patient folders and discharge summaries for patients admitted in March and July 2015. Cohen’s/Fleiss’ kappa coefficients (kappa) were used to measure agreements between the sources. While 3768 (65%) of the 5795 inpatient-level records contained a discharge summary, less than 835 (15%) of diagnoses were coded using ICD-10 codes. Despite most of the records having correct patient identifiers [kappa: 0.92; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.91-0.93], significant inconsistencies were observed between the registers, patient folders and discharge summaries for some data elements: attending physician’s signature (kappa: 0.71; 95% CI 0.67-0.75); results of the investigation (kappa: 0.71; 95% CI 0.69-0.74); patient’s age (kappa: 0.72; 95% CI 0.70-0.74); and discharge diagnosis (kappa: 0.92; 95% CI 0.90-0.94). The strength of agreement for all elements was statistically significant (P-value <= 0.001). The absence of coded inpatient diagnoses and identified data inaccuracies indicates that existing routine health information systems in public-sector hospitals in the NHI pilot districts are not yet able to sufficiently support reimbursements and resource management.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Institutional capacity is needed to undertake diagnostic coding, improve data quality and ensure that a standard discharge summary is completed for every inpatient.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Is the Routine Health Information System Ready To Support the Planned National Health Insurance Scheme In South Africa? Health Policy and Planning, 2021;36(5):639-650. Health Policy and Planning can be contacted at: Oxford Univ Press, Great Clarendon St, Oxford OX2 6DP, England. (Oxford University Press - http://www.oup.com/; Health Policy and Planning - heapol.oxfordjournals.org)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Edward Nicol, South African Medical Research Council, Burden Dis Res Unit, Cape Town, South Africa. Additional authors for this research include Lyn A. Hanmer, Ferdinand C. Mukumbang, Wisdom Basera, Andiswa Zitho and Debbie Bradshaw.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czab008. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)