Reliability of Medicare hospital discharge records

This report presents the findings of an assessment of the reliability of information describing hospital utilization by Medicare beneficiaries and obtained as a by-product of the Medicare administrative record keeping system. The information is generated primarily from claims submitted by hospitals to fiscal intermediaries for reimbursement purposes. The study was a logical extension of an earlier examination of the reliability of hospital utilization data compiled by private abstracting services and based on abstracts of medical records.