Quality of reporting on infectious diseases in Zenica-Doboj Canton.

GOAL Reporting on infectious diseases is one of the most important measures for controlling the infectious diseases. In Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the implementation an archaic system of reporting, older than 20 years, which is incorporated into the partially reformed health system. The aim of this study is to determine and analyze the quality of keeping records of communicable diseases and quality of data obtained. It also sought to identify weaknesses in the system that contributes to poor reporting and poor data quality. METHODS The study was retrospective-prospective, descriptive and analytical. Data were collected during June 2010 from all health facilities of Zenica-Doboj Canton. The data are collected from regular reports from medical institutions, received reports on contagious diseases, examination of 12.5% of the medical records of patients who were examined in June 2010, and the survey on 19% 9% physicians and 9% nurses. RESULTS The survey showed that about 40% of infectious diseases do are not reported by individual application forms. Most often not reported are fungal infections (99.7% unreported) and intestinal infectious diseases. From found diseases in a sample of medical records reviewed, only 1.4% of them were reported. Health professionals in 51% agree that reporting is not satisfactory, and in 49% of the cases agree that the great merit of this situation have the management of health institutions and local epidemiologists who do not organize professional meetings regarding the reporting on infectious diseases. A large number of health professionals (40%) do not fill properly report on the illness, so we have a 58% incorrectly filled forms that arrived in the Institute of Public Health. CONCLUSIONS The health workers from Zenica-Doboj Canton did not sufficiently developed awareness about the need to report infectious diseases. In order to overcome this situation, management of health care institutions must have a responsible attitude towards the medical documentation and records, and binding continued medical education of health professionals to raise awareness about the importance of proper medical documentation management.