Background: With respect to the importance of medical record as a useful tool for supervision, assessment, and planning in order to improve our system facilities, the present study was carried out to evaluate the performance of medical record department of specialized-teaching hospitals of Iran Medical Science University in 1380.

Materials and methods: It was a descriptive study. Data were gathered via checklist through face-to-face interview. Performance evaluation was achieved in 4 different categories reception, coding, statistics, and archiving, each with 8-9 indices.

Results: Total performance of the medical record department was 55.4%. Coding and statistics units have the best (64.2%) and the worst (50%) scoring. The least index of reception and coding units was the presence of a guideline (20%). Shaheed Heshemi Nejad and Shaheed Navab Safavi had the best and worst performance, respectively (70.5% vs. 48.8%).

Conclusion : The overall performance of the evaluated hospitals was good. Preparing specific guidelines, staffing and employing graduates of medical records, implementation of continuous and regualra training courses, design of suitable software package, allocation of budget, space and equipment may improve medical record department performance