Citation

Startsev N, Dimov P, Grosche B, Tretyakov F, Schüz J, Akleyev A. Methods Inf. Med. 2015; 54(3): ePub.

Affiliation

Nikolaj Startsev, Urals Research Center for Radiation Medicine, 68a st. Vorovskogo, 454076, Chelyabinsk Russia, E-mail: startsev@urcrm.ru.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Georg Thieme Verlag)

DOI

10.3414/ME14-01-0101

PMID

25731905

Abstract

BACKGROUND: To follow up populations exposed to several radiation accidents in the Southern Urals, a cause-of-death registry was established at the Urals Center capturing deaths in the Chelyabinsk, Kurgan and Sverdlovsk region since 1950.

OBJECTIVES: When registering deaths over such a long time period, quality measures need to be in place to maintain quality and reduce the impact of individual coders as well as quality changes in death certificates.

METHODS: To ensure the uniformity of coding, a method for semi-automatic coding was developed, which is described here. Briefly, the method is based on a dynamic thesaurus, database-supported coding and parallel coding by two different individuals.

RESULTS: A comparison of the proposed method for organizing the coding process with the common procedure of coding showed good agreement, with, at the end of the coding process, 70  - 90% agreement for the three-digit ICD -9 rubrics.

CONCLUSIONS: The semi-automatic method ensures a sufficiently high quality of coding by at the same time providing an opportunity to reduce the labor intensity inherent in the creation of large-volume cause-of-death registries.

Language: en