Introduction: Incomplete data capture is an ongoing issue that can compromise the validity of quality improvement, quality assurance, and clinical studies. Intermountain Health Care, a 20-hospital integrated healthcare delivery system, treats over five thousand heart failure (HF) patients annually. A Discharge Medication Database (DMD) was instituted to track appropriate medication prescription and teaching for cardiac patients. To insure that all appropriate HF patients are identified and that pertinent data are entered into the DMD, we developed a weekly report specific to each facility. Hypothesis: The null hypothesis is that the implementation of this reporting system has no significant impact on the proportion of HF patient encounters with data in the DMD. Methods: The automated report utilizes a merged dataset from the Enterprise Data Warehouse. This dataset is derived from CaseMix data and the DMD. An electronic audit of the CaseMix data creates a table listing patient encounters with a primary diagnosis of heart failure and flags those encounters missing a record in the DMD. A standard reporting tool generates hospital-specific reports that are automatically emailed once a week. Discharge data are then retrospectively collected on the identified patient encounters and are entered into the system-wide database. From the three largest IHC hospitals, 1778 inpatient encounters with a primary ICD-9 code for heart failure and a discharge date between 2002 and 2003 were identified. Exclusionary criteria were aligned with JCAHO's Heart Failure Core Performance Measures. The primary outcome measurement was the proportion of eligible patient encounters entered into the DMD. Results: In 2002, 38.5 % of the HF patient encounters had data entered into the database. After implementation of the automated reporting system, the percentage had risen to 76.9% in 2003. This non-randomized binomial comparative study showed a significant (p=0.0043) increase in the proportion of HF patients with data in the DMD. Conclusions: Significant improvement in data collection can be achieved through the implementation of automated reporting systems. Successful systems require specific records to be identified and reported to the accountable persons in a timely manner.