Is heart disease getting a bum rap in the United States? So says researchers who find that over reporting heart disease as a cause of death is common in American hospitals.
And apparently the over reporting is skewing statistics on death in the U.S.
Researchers cited limited physician training on death certification as the greatest contributor to poor quality in mortality data. Another recent
study found that residents in New York hospitals often knowingly assign incorrect causes of death.
In the interventional study, after researchers introduced multicomponent training and communication with staff at eight New York hospitals, reporting of heart disease deaths declined by 54% post-intervention.
Other leading causes of death (malignant neoplasms, influenza and pneumonia, cerebrovascular disease and chronic lower respiratory disease) increased by 48% to 232%.
The poor quality cause-of-death data, said researchers, affects disease trends which help to set priorities for clinical and biomedical research, public health programs and health care funding allocation.
Researchers referred to Stamp’s Law (a quotation from British civil servant, economist and statistician Josiah Stamp) to emphasize their point.
“The Government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the chowky dar (village watchman) who just puts down what he damn pleases.”