The Analysis of the Quality of Patient Drug Information Recording Process at Referral Teaching Hospital Using Six Sigma

Sharp rise in health care costs associated with the reduction of hospital's support by government has increased the importance of insurance organizations as the main source of hospital's income. An important part of hospitals’ demands is related to the medical records of Iranian Health Insurance organization that are subject to deductions and are deduced from the hospitals’ demands after investigating the cause of defect in the process.
The present study was conducted as a retrospective descriptive research. In this study, sampling was not conducted and all incomplete files of patients covered by Iranian Health Insurance Organization in the reference hospital (n=30) were entered into the study. Data of checklists were entered into Excel software version 22 and the causes were determined by using Fishbone diagram. Six-sigma scale was used to analyze the quality of the process.
Process errors were detected in 6 groups and the highest error rates were respectively related to pharmaceutical orders control stages, entering them in cards and requesting drug through drug delivering system. The quality of the reviewed process was evaluated as moderate level based on the calculated sigma. The highest rate of error was related to the records of patients covered by rural fund of non-global services.
Measures such as staff training, monitoring and updating the record keeping system and improving external parts coordination can greatly reduce errors in three above-mentioned stages.