Validation of journal information for referral and discharge at scheduled hospital treatment
Structured summary
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The specialist health service receives yearly a high number of referrals for specialist treatments. The right to prioritized treatment is based on the Law of patient rights and precept for the priorities in the health services.
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Key message
The specialist health service receives yearly a high number of referrals for specialist treatments. The right to prioritized treatment is based on the Law of patient rights and precept for the priorities in the health services. In the period 2008-2009 32 priority guidelines for different medical fields were introduced to harmonize practice. The referrals describe symptoms and tentative diagnoses which are the basis for the assessment by the hospitals for the type of treatment needed and whether this give right to prioritzed treatment. In the work with assessing the introduction of the priority guidelines the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Service performed a sub-study to evaluate the agreement between referral information and discharge diagnosis. Referral information and discharge diagnosis for patients treated in four of Norways largest hospitals each representing one of the four health regions were found to have a high degree of agreement per hospital and overall. Some variation was found for single conditions and per hospital, but the agreement was still satisfactory between referral information and discharge diagnosis. The study was carried out at four regional- and university hospitals which have many referred patients from other hospitals. This may have caused a selection of patients into the study that already had some degree of examinations for assessing their condition.