Methods for Ensuring High Quality of Coding of Cause of Death

Summary 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.