Developing services for head injury: obtaining the data

The aim of this article is to propose standards for data collection in head injury, the commonest cause of death and disability in young people. The objectives include evaluation of an audit methodology. The retrospective review conducted for the Eastern Head Injury Study in the UK identified a variety of problems, notably ambiguous terminology, inadequacies in ICD-10 codes, and inconsistent practices in recording data on head injury. Conclusions are that the standards developed through the review should improve data collection practice, and rehabilitation codes should assist in tracking patient pathways through care.