ArticleBMC health services research2014
Sharing of clinical data in a maternity setting: how do paper hand-held records and electronic health records compare for completeness?
Article in BMC health services research, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Digital Health Data Quality Issues: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic review on the use of patient-held health records in low-income and middle-income countries.BMJ open · 2021Pooled it
- Design and content of health facility routine data recording and reporting forms for maternal, newborn, and child health: a scoping review of literature.JAMIA open · 2026Review
- Ending preventable maternal deaths in Malawi: the stakeholders consensus approach to identify maternal health needs priorities.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- The role of digital clinical decision support tool in improving quality of intrapartum and postpartum care: experiences from two states of India.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2021Article
- Risk Analysis for Patient Safety in Surgical Departments: Cross-Sectional Design Usefulness.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Electronic and paper mode of data capture when assessing patient-reported outcomes in the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network.Journal of investigative and clinical dentistry · 2019Article
- Article
- Comparing the Effects of Paper and Digital Checklists on Team Performance in Time-Critical Work.Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. CHI Conference · 2019Article
- Small interface changes have dramatic impacts: how mandatory fields in electronic medical records increased pertussis vaccination rates in Australian obstetric patients.BMJ health & care informatics · 2019Article
- Patient portal readiness among postpartum patients in a safety net setting.Applied clinical informatics · 2017Article
- Quality of care provided in two Scottish rural community maternity units: a retrospective case review.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2017Article
- Information management flow for tele-homecare for the elderly; An emerging need for continuity of care.Electronic physician · 2017Article
- Current issues in patient safety in surgery: a review.Patient safety in surgery · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHistorically, the paper hand-held record (PHR) has been used for sharing information between hospital clinicians, general practitioners and pregnant women in a maternity shared-care environment. Recently in alignment with a National e-health agenda, an electronic health record (EHR) was introduced at an Australian tertiary maternity service to replace the PHR for collection and transfer of data. The aim of this study was to examine and compare the completeness of clinical data collected in a PHR and an EHR.
methodsWe undertook a comparative cohort design study to determine differences in completeness between data collected from maternity records in two phases. Phase 1 data were collected from the PHR and Phase 2 data from the EHR. Records were compared for completeness of best practice variables collected The primary outcome was the presence of best practice variables and the secondary outcomes were the differences in individual variables between the records.
resultsNinety-four percent of paper medical charts were available in Phase 1 and 100% of records from an obstetric database in Phase 2. No PHR or EHR had a complete dataset of best practice variables. The variables with significant improvement in completeness of data documented in the EHR, compared with the PHR, were urine culture, glucose tolerance test, nuchal screening, morphology scans, folic acid advice, tobacco smoking, illicit drug assessment and domestic violence assessment (p = 0.001). Additionally the documentation of immunisations (pertussis, hepatitis B, varicella, fluvax) were markedly improved in the EHR (p = 0.001). The variables of blood pressure, proteinuria, blood group, antibody, rubella and syphilis status, showed no significant differences in completeness of recording.
conclusionThis is the first paper to report on the comparison of clinical data collected on a PHR and EHR in a maternity shared-care setting. The use of an EHR demonstrated significant improvements to the collection of best practice variables. Additionally, the data in an EHR were more available to relevant clinical staff with the appropriate log-in and more easily retrieved than from the PHR. This study contributes to an under-researched area of determining data quality collected in patient records.
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Registered trials
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