Avoidable death atlas
The European Commission working group on health services and avoidable deaths has recently published volume two of the second edition of the European Community Atlas of Avoidable Deaths. This publication (volume one of the second edition was published in 1991) describes mortality in 1980-1984 for a further eight medical conditions from which death is partly avoidable, given appropriate and timely medical and preventive intervention. The first edition of the Atlas was published in 1988 and described "avoidable mortality" from 17 conditions in ten countries during the period 1974-1978. In addition to complementing this existing information, the second edition also compares the differences between the two periods. As there is growing interest in evaluating and monitoring the performance of health services, much effort has centred on rationalizing the enormous volume of data collected in order to reproduce a manageable series of measures that reflect the various facets of a health care system. Progress in the development of indicators of the quality and outcome of health care services has, however, lagged behind. This atlas represents an important step towards establishing such indicators, applicable nationally and internationally, to monitor health service performance.