Quality and management of notifiable communicable disease reporting in China, 2013

Objective To understand the quality and management of notifiable communicable disease reporting in China and provide evidence for the further improvement of network direct reporting of communicable diseases, for the evaluation the performance of communicable disease reporting in medical institutions at all levels according the requirement of the 12th five year plan of China and for the final evaluation at the end of the 12th fiver year plan period. Methods The health administrative departments, centers for disease control and prevention and hospitals in 9 provinces were selected from 31 provinces (autonomous region and municipality) and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps by multistage stratified cluster sampling. Results The overall reporting rate of communicable diseases in hospitals at all levels was 91.87% (95%CI 90.57%-93.05%). In general, the reporting rate in township health centers or community health centers was higher than that in hospitals at higher level, the reporting rate was lowest in provincial hospitals. The management of the notifiable communicable disease reporting system in China has been greatly improved in term of organization structure and supporting service. The information technology (IT) has played an important role in the communicable disease reporting, but the problems still exist. Conclusion For improvement of the quality and management of communicable disease reporting, it is necessary to improve hospitals' electronic medical recording system according to the requirement for the surveillance data acquisition and transfer, optimize the reporting procedure by using IT for the transfer of doctor's diagnoses to reporting system and strengthen the management of reporting system.