Sharing health care information
The 'EuroHOPE – European health care outcomes, performance and efficiency' (EUROHOPE) project evaluated European health care systems in terms of outcomes, quality, use of resources and costs relative to five key public health problems and diseases. These covered acute myocardial infarction, stroke, hip fracture, breast cancer and low-birth-weight infants. EUROHOPE case studies are unique in having collected nationwide data, at the patient level, for several diagnoses. There were well-defined criteria for selecting patients at first hospital admission and follow-up until one year after the index admission. Linkage of records made it possible to clearly delineate episodes of care and assess vital status. EUROHOPE consolidated this data from seven EU countries for basing fair performance comparisons between European countries. Privacy issues prevented the pooling of national data sets into one database. Also, it was not permissible to share outcomes at hospital level in all countries. Possibilities for linking and sharing data appear to vary widely among countries. To date, there remains no common ground for efficiency and outcome comparisons between countries, regions and hospitals across all European countries. The project strategically yielded two benchmarking dimensions. First, indicators were developed to compare performance on the relationship between costs, processes and outcomes. Second, the data gathered allows comparisons by country performance against regions and hospitals in other countries. Data contributes to the ongoing discussion about a possible trade-off between costs and outcomes. Observations of worse outcomes of care in one country with lower costs or shorter length of stay should have important implications for European health care. Project results are ready to be applied to (and by) other countries. With improved health information systems, other EU countries can adopt a unique personal identification code enabling them to register and link with this project. EUROHOPE papers and clinical articles are available on the project website.
Keywords
Health care, stroke, breast cancer, hip fracture, low-birth-weight infants
