Background: The National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS) is the Irish treated-drug misuse surveillance system.
Aim: To measure completeness and accuracy of the NDTRS.
Methods: Cross-sectional survey of clinical records and matching NDTRS reporting forms of a random sample of 520 clients attending 4 Dublin treatment centres. Using clients' clinical records as the gold standard, system completeness (proportion of sample reported to the NDTRS) and accuracy of selected variables (proportion of reported clients' information on the NDTRS that matched clinical record information) were measured.
Results: 452/520 (87%) selected records were retrieved. The NDTRS was only 61.1% (95% CI 56.5-65-5) complete; completeness differed across treatment centres (21.8%-85.6%, p < 0.0001) and was greater for new and returning clients than for continuing clients (81.7% versus 53.9% respectively, p < 0.0001). Problems were identified with the accuracy of some key variables.
Conclusions: Urgent actions have been taken to improve the completeness and accuracy of the reporting system.