The cause (or causes) of death listed on the medical certificate of cause of death are coded and consolidated into national vital statistics. These codes are consolidated into national vital statistics on leading causes of death, used by governments to determine health priorities and evaluate the impact of health programs. It is important that this information on the leading causes of death are accurate. The MCCOD assessment tool is designed to assess the quality of death certification practices through checking for common errors in medical certificates of death. 

The MCCOD assessment tool is a simple form that is used to assess individually each medical certificate of cause of death. It checks whether appropriate fields are filled in correctly including sections on the certificate details, details about the deceased, and checks for nine common errors and omissions of information related to the cause of death. It checks if the correct underlying cause of death is identified given the available information on the form, but does not check the validity of the ICD coding. For ICD code checks, see the Iris and ANACONDA tools.

This tool can be used to assess the quality of medical certification of death as part of routine assessment, or to assess the training needs of physicians and clinicians in designing cause of death certification training. It can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of death certification training.

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Medical certification of cause of death section