Ly Birama Apho, Gagnon Marie-Pierre, Légaré France, Simonyan David, Rousseau Michel, Dembélé Karim
Institut de Recherche sur la Santé des Populations, Université d'Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Centre de Recherche du CHUQ, Québec, Canada.
Mali Med. 2014;29(2):22-32.
To determine the prevalence of missing data in the medical registers held by the physicians of Bamako's community health centres, and identify physicians' characteristics associated with the prevalence.
A cross-sectional and exploratory study was conducted between January and February 2011. The study population consisted of doctors, and data from their medical consultations. The sample was selected using three-stage sampling. Data were collected through closed-ended questionnaire and record counting. Data analysis was descriptive and analytic.
The study involved 32 doctors and data from 3072 medical consultations. Physicians were predominantly male (87.5%). The prevalence of missing data ranged from 0.1% to 95.4% and was higher for diagnoses (15.5%), treatments (17.3%) and observations (95.4%). Missing diagnoses were determined by the number of years in the position, and the number of years of service. Missing treatments were determined by data management training, the number of years in the position and the number of years of service.
The extent of missing diagnoses, missing treatments and missing observations raise doubts on the quality of health information, effectiveness of health decisions and effectiveness of health interventions.
