title: Accuracy of birth certificate data regarding the amount, timing, and adequacy of prenatal care using prenatal clinic medical records as referents.
abstract: This study compared birth certificate data on the amount, timing, and adequacy of prenatal care with the same data abstracted from the prenatal clinic records of 2,032 women who attended a health department prenatal clinic in northeast Georgia from 1980 to 1988. Overall accuracy was poor. Only 14.3% (n = 291) of the records completely agreed on the total number of visits, while approximately 36% (n = 738) and 53% (n = 1,081) agreed within one visit and two visits, respectively. Complete agreement for month and trimester prenatal care began was 31.1% (n = 632) and 50.6% (n = 1,202), respectively. Because of the small geographic region included in the current study, the generalizability of these findings to other populations may be limited.
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242-1121, USA.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Burnett
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001719:Birth Certificates; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011247:Pregnancy; D011295:Prenatal Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity