The Impact of Feedback to Medical Housestaff on Chart Documentation and Quality of Care in the Outpatient Setting

Overview

Journal J Gen Intern Med

Publisher Springer

Specialty General Medicine

Date 1997 Jun 1

PMID 9192252

Citations 16

Authors

D A Opila

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether feedback from attending physicians to residents about outpatient medical records improves chart documentation and quality of care.

Design: Cross-sectional study with repeated measures.

Setting: Primary care internal medicine clinic at a metropolitan community hospital.

Patient/participants: Fifteen interns and 20 residents.

Intervention: Attending physicians reviewed at least two charts for each resident on three occasions about 4 months apart and then discussed their findings with the residents.

Measurements And Main Results: Explicit criteria defined the extent of chart documentation and the comprehensiveness of care delivery. Attending physicians also made a subjective assessment of the overall quality of care. All results were converted to 0-to-1 scales. From the first to the third period, chart documentation increased from 0.60 to 0.86 (p < .001), but there were no significant changes in the delivery of care or in the subjective assessments of the overall quality of care.

Conclusions: Both review of residents' outpatient medical records and periodic feedback from attending physicians improve how well medical housestaff document care in the chart.

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