Administrative and Registry Databases for Patient Safety Tracking and Quality Improvement

Acquisition of data on clinical performance is essential to improve outcomes in surgery. Large, national datasets allow hospitals to monitor events involving patient safety, complications, and benchmark against peer hospitals and facilitate quality improvement (QI) development. Although clinical datasets are often preferable, administrative data also have potential for actionable QI. Hospitals should use whatever data resources may be available and be creative in combining data sources for the most clinically meaningful metrics. Although collection of data is essential in understanding the problems an individual hospital is facing, rigorous QI infrastructure is necessary to translate data to action and achieve sustained change.