Table 2 Data mechanisms of the two administrations

Data subjects

Patients registered with MI.

Local residency is essential. Some RHIP’s data cover all the patients of the local hospitals.

Data format standards

Urban population data have a unified format that hospitals must follow. Rural population data are gradually incorporated into urban population data with the basic result of a unified format.

There are big differences between provinces. Some provinces have proposed uniform standards, such as Jiangsu. However, in most of the provinces, prefectural standards are proposed. Some counties have their own standards. The hospitals mainly set the data format according to the requirements of the competent administration.

Data content

The system mainly collects all economic data of registered patients in real time. A holistic medical history is not recorded.

Outpatient medical records include the medical record home page, medical record, prescription and billing. Real-time inpatient medical records include the inpatient medical record home page, admission records, surgical consent, anaesthesia consent, blood transfusion informed consent, critically ill (heavy) notice, prescription and billing, etc.

Most of the RHIPs regularly collect all kinds of medical record data, daily or weekly. Some of them don’t collect economic data such as price and total cost of drugs.

Outpatient medical records include the medical record home page, medical record, laboratory reports, medical imaging data and so on. Inpatient medical records include the inpatient medical record home page, admission records, disease record, surgical consent, anesthesia consent, blood transfusion informed consent, special examination (special treatment) consent, critically ill (heavy) notice, medical order, auxiliary examination report form, body temperature list, medical imaging report, pathology report, etc.

Data quality

Data quality is stable and reliable. Eligibility and quotas of MI reimbursement are the key indicators which affect hospitals’ behaviour.

The data quality varies. There are no effective quality control measures.