WebRehab: a Swedish database for quality control in rehabilitation

The healthcare sector needs to deliver evidence-based care and be cost-effective. This can be monitored in part via a national quality registry containing individualized data concerning patient problems, medical interventions, outcomes of treatment, and patient-reported outcomes. With this aim, WebRehab Sweden was launched in 1997 and has been available online since 2007. The aim of this paper is to discuss the design, some results, and possible use of such a registry.

Data entered into the registry online since 2007 were used in this paper. The registry contains information from 7,458 patients. Data from the first 3 years were used to show differences between genders and among diagnostic groups. Non-parametric statistics were used to analyse the differences between groups.

The registry coverage of the country is 95%, and completeness is 81%. Data from hospitals/units have been accessible to the general public since 2009, but no data from individuals can be accessed. Length of stay has varied over the years, becoming significantly shorter between 2007 and 2012.

A quality registry presents an opportunity to improve rehabilitation processes at participating units, provides data for use in benchmarking between units, and enables hospital management to utilize resources wisely.