Volume 8, Number 7—July 2002
Research
Automatic Electronic Laboratory-Based Reporting of Notifiable Infectious Diseases
Table 3
Electronic false positives and missed reports in UPMC reporting systema
Errors | No. (%) of electronic or paper-based only reports | Nature of problem |
---|---|---|
Electronic false positives | ||
Incorrect use of free text with organism codes | 6 (60) | Culture report reads “No [free text]” followed by organism ID code |
Inability to retrieve sent false reports | 3 (30) | Unable to retrieve preliminary reports |
Failure of logic detection | 1 (10) | Data extracted from wrong portion of result field by logic detection |
Total | 10 | |
Electronic false negatives (missed reports) | ||
Incorrect use of free text | 22 (88) | Organism name typed out as free text in result field |
Unknown (failure of transmission?) | 3 (12) | Found to be in UPMC hospital computer terminal system by using organism ID code properly but not found in UPMC electronic database |
Total | 25 |
aUPMC, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health System.