Feasibility of using death certificates for studying place of death in Latin America

Abstract

Objective This paper assesses the availability and quality of death certificate data in Latin America and the feasibility of using these data to study place of death and associated factors.

Methods In this comparative study, we collected examples of current official death certificates and digital data files containing information about all deaths that occurred during 1 year in 19 Latin American countries. Data were collected from June 2019 to May 2020. The records for place of death and associated variables were studied. The criteria for data quality were completeness, number of ill-defined causes of death and timeliness.

Results All 19 countries provided copies of current official death certificates and 18 of these registered the place of death. Distinguishing among hospital or other health care institution, home and other was possible for all countries. Digital data files with death certificate data were available from 12 countries and 1 region. Three countries had data considered to be of high quality and seven had data considered to be of medium quality. Categories for place of death and most of the predetermined factors possibly associated with place of death were included in the data files.

Conclusions The quality of data sets was rated medium to high in 10 countries. Hence, death certificate data make it feasible to conduct an international comparative study on place of death and the associated factors in Latin America.