Developing a national quality registry for hand surgery: challenges and opportunities

[摘要] A Swedish national healthcare quality registry (NQR) may be defined as an archive comprising individualised data concerning patient problems, medical interventions, and outcomes following treatment.1 A helpful precondition in Sweden is the issuance of an individualised social security number which identifies the date of birth for each citizen, a procedure that was introduced in 1947. Non-voluntary health data registries were established during the 1950s to 1970s, for example the Swedish Cancer Registry in 1958,2 the Swedish Register of Congenital Malformations in 19643 and the Swedish Medical Birth Register in 1975.4 The latter two registries were initiated after the thalidomide catastrophe in Europe in the early 1960s. About forty years ago, in 1975, the Swedish Knee Arthroplasty Register (SKAR)5 was established following an initiative by the Swedish Orthopaedic Association and can probably be regarded as the first NQR in the world. It was soon followed by the Swedish Hip Arthroplasty Register in 1979.6 Registering all joint prostheses that had been implanted and removed led to the achievement of significant improvements over the years.7,8 Sweden has one of the lowest revision rates for knee and hip implants in the world.

[学科分类] 神经科学

[关键词] quality registers;healthcare quality;hand surgery;orthopaedic registries