Carath - ett verksamhetsinitierat kvalitetsregister och processtöd. Ger toraxkirurgin bra möjlighet att följa vårdprocessen
Sammanfattning
Carath is the name of a database and outcomes registry for cardiovascular surgery used and developed by four Swedish cardiothoracic centres in cooperation. This report focuses on our experiences, positive and negative, of designing and implementing a “tailor made” database program for process control in mainly cardiac surgery. The system now provides valuable, and in some ways unique information on medical outcomes as well as administrative data. We have also become very aware of the difficulties involved in maintaining a good quality of data in multicentre medical registries. Several factors, not least the human factor, must be taken into account when building user friendly databases and quality registries. Variables must be well defined. Also, direct linking of data and outcomes directly from digitalised patient records has proved to be complicated – technically and due to the complexity of health care processes.