On the flow of medical information through a hospital registration post.

The health status of any inpatient of the Geneva hospital is appraised 3 times as follows: once before hospitalisation, then while registering, and last at discharge from hospital. Data about these 3 examinations were gathered in the registration post and then coded. The number of recorded ailments and their contents were statistically analysed. There is a notable increase in the number of diagnosed ailments and a large agreement about their nature. Simple models to describe the relations between those 2 variables were investigated, but turned up to be somewhat unsatisfying. Throughout the paper due allowance is made for a distinction between medicosurgical ailments and more specialised ones.