Evaluation study of the improvement of the quality of death information in hospitals of the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 2017

Abstract

Introduction: Deaths classified as Garbage Cause (GC) are considered to be of little use in triggering public health prevention actions. Objective: Evaluate the impact of hospital research on recovering the true root cause of death. Methodology: Descriptive study on the investigation of deaths with root causes classified as garbage code in ten selected hospitals with the highest number of this cause of death in the states of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and São Paulo (SP), Brazil, in 2017. The investigation considered the patient’s medical record, which contains the information collected by hospital surveillance professionals in a standardized form. Results: 2,579 deaths with a GC and 2,116 with GC priorities. The highest proportion occurred in the 70-year-old or older group with differences in the predominant causes as a function of the life cycle. The GC reclassification was 41.9% and 93.6% of deaths investigated in RJ and SP, respectively. Deaths which had altered causes and remained as garbage code were analyzed for change in severity level, which take into account the potential impact of GC in the mortality profile. Thus, 70.7% and 73.6% of GC deaths with very high and with high level, respectively, were reclassified to lower levels. Among the garbage codes that went to well-defined causes, the ICD-10 External Causes chapter was the one that rendered the highest number of deaths. Conclusion: The investigation allowed to qualify causes of death and demonstrated the need for professional training on the definition of the root cause of death.