A new approach for measuring the work and quality of histopathology reporting

Aims Cancer datasets drive report quality, but require more work to inform compliant reports. The aim of this study was to correlate the number of words with measures of quality, to examine the impact of the drive for improved quality on the workload of histopathology reporting over time. Methods and results We examined the first 10 reports of colon, breast, renal, lung and ovarian carcinoma, melanoma resection, nodal lymphoma appendicitis and seborrhoeic keratosis (SK) issued in 1991, 2001 and 2011. Correlations were analysed using Pearson's partial correlation coefficients. Word count increased significantly over time for most specimen types examined. Word count almost always correlated with units of information, indicating that the word count was a good measure of the amount of information contained within the reports; this correlation was preserved following correction for the effect of time. A good correlation with compliance with cancer datasets was also observed, but was weakened or lost following correction for the increase in word count and units of information that occurred between time points. Conclusions These data indicate that word count could potentially be used as a measure of information content if its integrity and usefulness are continuously validated. Further prospective studies are required to assess and validate this approach.