BACKGROUND: Accident insurance consultants (D-physicians) are qualified specialists with particular expertise in occupational medicine. Within the medical treatment procedure of the German Statutory Accident Insurance (DGUV), D‑physicians must make a report on the medical care after occupational accidents. This nationwide evaluation aimed to systematically measure the quality of documentation of these medical reports. Peer review is a common method to ensure process quality.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: For each included D‑physician 30 reports of more severe cases from 2017 were randomly selected. The reports were anonymized and randomly assigned to a peer reviewer. Peer reviewers used a web-based checklist with nine rating categories and dichotomous response format (deficiency/no deficiency). To evaluate overall quality each report was rated with an overall grade from 1 (very good) to 6 (insufficient).
RESULTS: A total of 30,384 reports were evaluated by 82 peer reviewers. One third of the reports contained no deficiencies. Most deficiencies were found in the category on information about the accident. The mean overall grade for each D‑physician was 2.6 and ranged from 1.5 (best) to 4.1 (worst). All evaluated D‑physicians were given an individual quality report which described the main findings.
CONCLUSION: The first nationwide peer review of the DGUV proved to be a practical and valid quality assurance procedure to evaluate the medical reports of D‑physicians. The quality of the reports was in general good. The DGUV plans to repeat the peer review process taking further groups of D‑physicians into consideration.
Language: de
Keywords
Quality assurance; Checklist; Medical reports; Occupational accident; Process quality