Diagnostic consistency between admission and discharge of pediatric cases in a tertiary teaching hospital in China

BACKGROUND: Patient-centered, high-quality health care relies on accurate and timely diagnosis. Diagnosis is a complex, error-prone process. Prevention of errors involves understanding the cause of errors. This study investigated diagnostic discordance between admission and discharge in pediatric cases. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the electronic medical records of 5381 pediatric inpatients during 2017–2018 in a tertiary teaching hospital. We analyzed diagnostic consistency by comparing the first 4 digits of admission and discharge ICD-10 codes of the cases and classified them as concordant for “complete and partial match” or discordant for “no match”. RESULTS: Diagnostic discordance was observed in 49.2% with the highest prevalence in infections of the nervous and respiratory systems (Ps < 0.001). Multiple (multivariable) logistic regression analysis predicted a lower risk of diagnostic discordance with older children (aOR, 95%CI: 0.94, 0.93–0.96) and a higher risk with infectious diseases (aOR, 95%CI: 1.49, 1.33–1.66) and admission by resident and attending pediatricians (aOR, 95%CI: 1.41, 1.30–1.54). Discordant cases had a higher rate of antibiotic prescription (OR, 95%CI: 2.09, 1.87–2.33), a longer duration of antibiotic use (P = 0.02), a longer length of hospital stay (P < 0.001), and higher medical expenses (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study denotes a considerably high rate of discordance between admission and discharge diagnoses with an associated higher and longer prescription of antibiotics, a longer length of stay, and higher medical expenses among Chinese pediatric inpatient cases. Infectious diseases were identified as high-risk clinical conditions for discordance. Considering potential diagnostic and coding errors, departmental investigation of preventable diagnostic discordance is suggested for quality health care and preventing potential medicolegal consequences. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-023-03995-2.