Survey of medical data from data acquisition to high quality patient treatment

The European Clinical Database EuCliD/spl reg/ has been developed as a tool for supervising selected quality indicators of about 200 European dialysis centres. EuCliD/spl reg/ is a Lotus Notes/spl reg/ based database currently containing medical data of more than 22,000 dialysis patients from 220 dialysis centres in 10 European countries. Data evaluation is performed with statistical tools like SPSS. EuCliD/spl reg/ is used as a part of the Quality Management System of Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) and its Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) program. Each participating dialysis centre receives benchmarking reports in regular intervals (currently every half year). The benchmark for all quality parameters is the weighted mean of the corresponding data of all centres. Quality parameters are selected according to the "Quality Pyramid" and the European Best Practice Guidelines (EBPG) or other accepted guidelines (for instance DOQI). An obvious impact of our work on the quality of the treatments could be observed. This concerns important outcome predictors like K*t/V and haemoglobin concentration as well as the outcome itself expressed in survival rates.