An international practitioner data bank as a quality tool

While international tort costs have not reached the level of those in the United States, international medical employers, like their American counterparts, must be able to ascertain updated objective information regarding the physicians they are going to employ, in order to protect their patients and organizations from the increasing risks in today's medical environment. The NPDB set up in the United States by the United States Congress provides a structure that can record and set standards for professional reviews. While the data bank established in the United States can still be considered a new entity, and the exact impact it has on quality, peer review and risk management is still being judged, it is the first step towards an organized, objective governing body. We recommend that an international committee convene to study the American model of a data bank and decide how and which parameters could be used for setting international standards and norms to be recorded in an international data bank. This data bank would be an important addition to the increasing array of tools available to ensure quality care.