Survey on Performance of Hospital Medical Records Committee in Hospitals of the Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in 2005-2007

Medical records committee is a qualitative committee in organizational charts of hospitals. This committee makes decisions on medical records policy, medical records procedures, medical records forms, and relevant problems to the management of patient information. The medial records committee is important in accreditation programs too. This research was done in respect of assess the performance of medical records committees, according to medical records sessions reports. In this cross sectional study, all reports of medical records committee during 2005-2007 were observed. The check list for gathering data was designed accordaning to the medical records committee duty in the text books. Variables were the number of medical records committee sessions, discussed problems, made decisions, and the representative which must be present in sessions. Of the 20 hospitals, 5 (30.8%) were educational. The whole sessions which must be established were 600, but only 257 (42.8 %) were established. The discussed problems in relation to 5 responsibility of medical records committee were 513 topics which 360 of them (70.2%) were agreed, 50 (9.8%) refused, and 98 problem (19.1%) were questionable. As the results showed, the physician and financial representative were absent in 63 medical records committee sessions (36.2%). Medical records committee must be more active than the past. Because of importance of medical record committee, the sessions must be establish regularly, the decisions mus follow up, and evaluation of the medical records committee should be done by own hospital annually.