The Korea National Patient Safety Incidents Inquiry Survey: Feasibility of Medical Record Review for Detecting Adverse Events in Regional Public Hospitals

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to examine the Korea National Patient Safety Incidents Inquiry conducted in the Republic of Korea; specifically, we assessed the validity of screening criteria, interreviewer reliability, quality of medical records, and the time required for reviewing medical records. METHODS: A 3-stage retrospective medical record review was performed. The sensitivity and positive predictive value of the screening criteria for the adverse events were calculated, and interreviewer reliability was verified using the overall agreement rate and κ value. In addition, the results of medical record quality assessment and time required for review were analyzed. RESULTS: There were a total of 4159 patients (55.5%) with at least 1 of the 41 screening criteria. In stage 1, the overall percent of agreement was 81.9% when all negatives from the 2 reviewers were included, and the κ value was 0.64 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.61–0.66). In stage 2, 84.6% of cases were a perfect match, and 87.4% were a partial match. The κ values were 0.159 (95% CI, 0.12–0.20) and 0.389 (95% CI, 0.35–0.43), respectively. The mean quality assessment scores were 3.18 of 4 points in stage 1 and 3.05 of 4 points in stage 2. In stage 1, it took an average of 13.02 minutes to asses each patient file; in stage 2, it took an average of 5.06 minutes. CONCLUSIONS: To increase the feasibility of medical record review for detecting adverse events, it is important not only to improve the reliability between reviewers but also to monitor the quality of medical records and the time required for review.