The Weed System and Complete Records

To the Editor.  —The current medical literature^1-5 and particularly the Archives of Internal Medicine expresses hope that the Weed system for record keeping will improve patient care, allow for physician assessment, and provide a nationwide data base for clinical research. The literature also contains studies relating the inadequacy of records as they now exist. These include the comments of Williamson et al⁶ on physician's neglect of laboratory data in charts and Froehlich's⁷ report that basic elements of the history and physical examination (such as description of optic fundi, description of lung findings, mention of cardiac rate and rhythm, and presence or absence of edema) were absent from the chart in a significant percentage of records. Our own studies of hospital records of myocardial infarction patients⁸ have shown that revelant material is omitted not only in community hospitals but also to a certain extent in a university