Statistical Analysis of Age Reporting Errors by Insured and Uninsured Patients in Cape Coast Teaching Hospital of Ghana
Statistical Analysis of Age Reporting Errors by Insured and Uninsured Patients in Cape Coast Teaching Hospital of Ghana
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加纳海岸角教学医院参保和未参保患者年龄报告错误的统计分析
DOI：
10.11648/j.bsi.20190402.11
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
B. Sena
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Eyiah;Bosson;B. Sena
年龄是指导临床医生对患者进行诊断、治疗以及实施医疗程序的一个非常重要的变量。患者向临床医生错误报告年龄可能会对患者的健康造成可怕的后果。这项回顾研究使用了10年的人口统计数据，涉及906,383名患者报告的年龄。人口统计学指标，如惠普尔斯，迈尔斯混合和联合评分被用来分析开普敦海岸教学医院有保险和没有保险的患者的报告年龄。未参保和参保患者的计算联合积分值分别为76.88和85.60，根据联合国指数的解释标准，该数据属于高度不准确的数据。Myers混合指数法得出未参保患者和参保患者的数字偏好总和分别为29.34和29.87。0、1、2和5位数字的混合总和超过了混合人口总数的10%，这表明参保和未参保的患者过度选择了以这些数字结尾的年龄。惠普尔对未参保患者和投保患者的指数分别为149.3和287.1。这些值分别表明，按照惠普尔指数解释标准，所报告的年龄的可靠性是粗略的和非常粗略的。被保险人比未参保者有更高的集中在0岁和5岁结束年龄的倾向。这项研究的结论是，开普敦海岸教学医院的年龄数据是错误和不准确的，如果不进行调整，可能会导致临床医生采取错误的与年龄相关的医疗程序。除其他建议外，建议医院建立记录年龄的创新方法，例如使用历史事件日历技术，在这种技术中，患者无法回忆起他们的正确年龄。
Age is a very important variable that guides clinicians to carryout diagnosis, treatment, as well as administering medical procedures to patients. Misreporting of age by patients to clinicians can have dire consequences on the patients’ health. This retrospective study used a 10 year demographic data involving the ages reported by 906,383 patients. Demographic indexes such as Whipples, Myers Blended and Joint Score were employed to analyse reported ages among insured and uninsured patients at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital. The computed joint score values of 76.88 and 85.60 respectively for uninsured and insured patients qualified the data as highly inaccurate by the standards of interpretation of UN index. The summary of the digit preference of the uninsured and insured patients by Myers blended index approach were 29.34 and 29.87 respectively. The blended sum at the digits 0, 1, 2 and 5 exceeded 10% of the total blended population, an indication of over selection of ages ending in those digits by the insured and uninsured patients. Whipple’s index for uninsured and insured patients was 149.3 and 287.1 respectively. These values respectively show that the reliability of the ages reported were rough and very rough, by the Whipple’s index interpretation standards. The insured were found to have higher tendency of concentrating on ages ending in 0 and 5 than the uninsured. The study concluded that age data in Cape Coast Teaching Hospital is misreported and inaccurate and if not adjusted may result in wrong age-dependent medical procedures undertaken by clinicians. It was recommended among others for hospitals to institute innovative ways of recording ages such as using calendar of historical events technique where the patients could not recall their correct age.