Evaluation of Accuracy and Completeness of Electronic Dental Records in a Dental School Setting

High-quality data in Electronic Dental Records (EDR) is essential for dental schools to provide high-quality patient care, improve dental students’ professionalism, and support a platform for research. Therefore, ensuring data quality in EDRs is extremely important.

To perform a quality appraisal of EDRs by evaluating their accuracy and completeness.

This was a Cross-sectional Observational Study conducted over four consecutive years in a dental school setting. Manual chart reviews were performed on an annual basis. EDR data were audited for accuracy and completeness. Accuracy was evaluated by comparing the entered data with an external source, where possible. An EDR data field was considered complete if it was not missing.

A total of 1,720 de-identified chart reviews were studied. The accuracy of the data to identify the patient was 93%. The completeness of the essential components of EDRs was 48-94%. Completeness was highest for documenting the patient’s chief complaint (94%) and the lowest for recall plan (48%). Completeness of data documenting social and behavioral determinants of health in EDRs was 36-77%, with the highest proportion of completeness in this domain being for oral hygiene habits, smoking habits, and social history.

The quality appraisal of EDRs varied according to the data field. Understanding patterns of accuracy and completeness in EDRs will guide training and quality enforcement activities.