The present study was performed to examine the accuracy of extracting a set of 9 obstetric performance measures from the ICD-9-CM coded discharge module of a computerized hospital information system [HIS] of a teaching hospital in Saudi Arabia. Data were obtained from HIS for all obstetric discharges during the year 2002. To examine the accuracy of computerized data, sensitivity and positive predictive value were calculated using medical records and obstetric suite register data as the "gold standard" and reasons of inaccuracies of coded data were identified. For all denominators, the sensitivity was above 98.5% while the positive predictive value was above 99%. With the exception of “forceps, vacuum or breech delivery" and "complications of delivery", all numerators which form the occurrences of performance measures showed high sensitivity [above 90%] and 100% positive predictive value. It was conclude that HIS data can be used to extract 7 obstetric performance measures for routine periodic quality management activities. Recommendations to improve the accuracy of identification of performance measures were discussed.