Analysis of surveillance of death cases in hospitals in Fujian province, 2007

ObjectiveTo analyze the surveillance results of death cases in hospitals in Fujian in 2007 and find out the death cause constituents for these death cases, trend of death causes and the factors related to the quality of death cause reporting. MethodsThe verified death cases with underlying death cause code which were reported by the direct network reporting from the hospitals in province were analyzed by using SPSS (12.0). ResultsChronic disease was the leading death cause in hospitals with circulatory disease (2577 cases) ranking first in the death cause's order, accounting for 22.46% of the death cause proportion, followed by cancer (2563 cases, 22.33%) and traffic accident (2029 cases). The total reported death number continued to increase in 2007, but the death number reported by township health centers only accounted for 2.65% of the total reported death number. Timely verified rate was significantly lower than 2006 (a decline of 19.70%), and mis-coding rate increased by 21.29% compared with 2006. ConclusionThe death caused by chronic disease accounted for the leading proportion of the death in hospitals, and circulatory disease, cancer and traffic accident were the first 3 underlying death causes of the people. The quality of death cause reporting in hospitals should be improved, especially on the quality of underlying death cause coding, and the training and management of death cause reporting in hospitals at all level should be strengthened.