A Comparison of Three Approaches to Patient Care Appraisal Based on Chart Review

The authors tested a three-level approach to auditing charts of psychiatric patients (review by clerks, research assistants, and clinical consultants) against two other methods. There were no significant differences among the three methods in scores of adequacy of patient care and adequacy of documentation. While the authors suggest the need for more research in the area of assessing quality of patient care, they believe that research assistants and other nonclinician reviewers can make a contribution to peer review.