FAQs on completing the (SPOT)light DVR

What is a Data Validation Report (DVR)?

The data validation report is an check on the internal consitency and completeness of each record that you have submitted. We look for missing data where you have not already told us that it is missing, and we look for things that might be true but are unusual so we need to check.

For example, a patient might have “Smith” as his first name, and “John” as his last name but this is unusual. We can’t simply tell you that it’s wrong so we will instead be asking you to confirm this.

How do I see the DVR for my site?

The DVR can only be seen by someone with SuperUser status. If you have previously been granted the ability to delete patient records then you are already a SuperUser. If you need to have your account upgraded then please drop us a line.

All you then need to do is click on the link indicated with the ‘Question Mark on a ClipBoard’ .

This will open the DVR in a new window which should look something like this:

What do the entries on this list mean?

Each check contains a reference to the patient’s hospital number and the date of their visit (in bold at the top).

e.g. Hospital number: 290227 (Visit date 01/01/2011)

Below this there is a single sentence explaining the problem:

e.g. This is an unusual first name for a female. Please confirm or correct the following fields:

Finally, there is a list of the fields from the (SPOT)light web portal which are involved with this check.

e.g.

- First name

- Sex

What do I do now?

Two tips:
- The list is sorted by (SPOT)light visit so try and do all the checks for one visit at the same time. It will be much quicker.
- You may want to print out the DVR onto paper or (if you have 2 computers next to each other) open the DVR on one screen and the (SPOT)light web portal on another.

Now take the hospital number given next to the check and find the relevant patient from your patient list (it is probably easiest just to type the hospital number in the search box at the top of the patient list).

Please now check the fields which have been referred to (and don’t forget that the demographics such as patient name are accessed by clicking on the pencil icon).

Now there are two possibilities:
1. You realise there is a mistake (the patient’s first and last names have been reversed). Please correct the mistake. Every morning at around 6am the system re-runs the checks in the DVR, and so the following day you can look at your DVR again and you should see that the message has gone away.

2. There is no mistake so you want to confirm the unusual value. You now need to go to the Confirm fields tab which is available from the visit pages.

From the Confirm fields tab then you just need to check the fields which were referenced in the check message (in this case ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’). As before, the system will automatically update at 6am the following morning and these checks will disappear from the DVR.

NB: Final words

Please remember that list will look longer than you might expect partly because there may be multiple checks requried for each (SPOT)light record. To save you having to move backwards and forwards between pages too much, then please look at all the checks for each patient before starting. We have tried to group them into a logical order but because some checks involve fields on different pages (e.g. ‘Sepsis’ on the Visit Details page and ‘Antibiotics’ on the Visit Outcome page) then sometimes switching back and forwards will be unavoidable.