Who should abstract medical records? A study of accuracy and cost.

The accuracy of patient record data depends not only on the quality of medical record keeping but also on the accuracy of the process of abstracting patient records to produce data suitable for analysis. This article reports results comparing record abstracts produced by four classes of abstracter: physicians, tumor registrars, nurses, and fourth-year medical students. The purpose of the comparison was to determine whether or not there were differences in accuracy among the four groups and, if accuracy was approximately equal, whether there were substantial differences among the costs of employing the four groups.