Quality assurance of autopsy permit form information, timeliness of performance, and issuance of preliminary report. A College of American Pathologists Q-Probes study of 5434 autopsies from 452 institutions.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a multi-institutional reference database of autopsy practices and performance for quality improvement purposes.

DESIGN: In 1992, participants in the Q-Probes quality improvement program of the College of American Pathologists each prospectively evaluated consecutive autopsies performed over a 6-month period, up to a maximum of 20 autopsies per institution.

SETTING: Hospital-based autopsies, excluding forensic cases and stillborn infants.

PARTICIPANTS: Four hundred forty-nine North American institutions and three Australian laboratories.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Completeness of information contained on autopsy permit forms, timeliness of autopsy performance between patients' deaths and autopsy prosections, and turnaround time of preliminary autopsy reports.

RESULTS: In the aggregate database of 5434 autopsy cases, 7 of 11 selected data items were consistently present on autopsy permit forms in 80% of the participating institutions. The median percentage of autopsies in which permission was given for an unrestricted (complete) autopsy was 71%. The following median time intervals were obtained: time of the patient's death to time the autopsy permission was received, 5 hours, 23 minutes; time the autopsy permission was received to time the prosection was started, 3 hours, 30 minutes; and time of the patient's death to time the prosection was started, 14 hours, 52 minutes. Differences were observed in some time intervals when the participating institutions were grouped by reported demographic characteristics. Preliminary reports were completed in 2 days or less in 80.9% of the autopsies.

CONCLUSIONS: Through this multi-institutional study, we have documented a consistent core of autopsy permit form information requested and a wide range of time intervals elapsed between the patients' deaths and autopsy performance. We have also established that the majority of participating institutions meet the College of American Pathologists' laboratory accreditation standard of providing a documented preliminary report of the gross pathologic diagnoses submitted to the attending physicians and institutional record within 2 working days following autopsy completion.