Informing the consultant psychiatrist--the problems of communication

There is considerable difficulty in providing clinicians with statistics relating to their work which are both relevant in content and suitable in style. As a contribution towards the solution of the problem for psychiatrists, a new type of statistical feedback, the Hospital/National Comparison Tables, has been produced in Scotland. In these tables the work of individual hospitals is compared with the work of all other hospitals of the same type. These are critically examined, together with examples of analyses showing the uses to which the data can be put.