About Data Quality Assurance
The Data Quality Assurance (DQA) Team
The DQA team was first established in 1990. It comprises of people with a background in either medical records or information. To date the team have carried out several data quality assurance projects on SMR data including SMR00, SMR01, SMR02, SMR03, SMR04 and ISD(S)1.
Objectives
The DQA team was set up to advise and assess the quality of SMR data submitted to national databases. Since the establishment the team has witnessed a steady improvement in the accuracy of SMR01 data i.e. an improvement of 0.9% has been achieved between the 1994 and 1996/97 projects for Main Condition and this despite the introduction of ICD10 in 1996. For Main Operation the improvement is more significant at 9.4%.
A further project to assess the accuracy of SMR01 data was carried out on 2000/01 data and, whilst it was noted that the accuracy for both Main Condition and Main Operation had both dropped by 1%, this still represented a high rate with the accuracy for Main Condition being 88% and the accuracy for Main Operation being 95%.
The most recent project to assess the accuracy of SMR01 data took place in 2004-2006 and the accuracy for Main Condition remained at 88% whilst the accuracy for Main Operation decreased by 2% to 93% compared to the 2000/01 project.
The team assesses and advises on all aspects of data quality including:
- Accuracy - how accurate are the data recorded on SMR compared to that in the medical record and have all data been recorded.
- Consistency - are data being recorded consistently by hospital, trusts and nationally to agreed standards.
- Completeness - using other datasets to check completeness of capture.
- Definitions - are the definitions detailed in the Definitions and Codes for the NHS Scotland publication being observed.
Contacts
Contact details of the DQA team
