EuCliD--a medical registry.
OBJECTIVE
The European Clinical Database EuCliD small star, filled has been developed as a tool for supervising selected quality indicators of about 200 European dialysis centers. Major efforts had to be made to comply with local and European laws regarding data security.


METHODS
EuCliD is a Lotus Notes based flat-file database currently containing medical data of more than 14,000 dialysis patients from 10 European countries. Another 15,000 patients from 150 centers in 4 South-American countries will be added soon. Data are entered either manually or by means of interfaces to existing local data managing systems. This information is transferred to a central Lotus Notes Server. Data evaluation was performed with statistical tools like SPSS.


RESULTS
EuCliD is used as a part of the CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) management system of Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) dialysis units. Each participating dialysis center receives (currently every half year) benchmarking reports at a regular interval. The benchmark for all quality parameters is the weighted mean of the corresponding data of all centers.


CONCLUSIONS
An obvious impact of data sampling and data evaluation on the quality of the treatments could be observed within the first one and a half years of working with EuCliD. This also concerns important outcome predictors like Kt/V and hemoglobin concentration as the outcome itself expressed in hospitalization days and survival rates. With the help of EuCliD the user is able to sample clinical data, identify problems, search for solutions with the aim of improving the dialysis treatment quality and guarantee a high-class treatment quality for all patients.
Steil
H
H
Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH, Department CME, 61346 Bad Homburg, Germany. helmut.steil@fmc-ag.de
Amato
C
C
Carioni
C
C
Kirchgessner
J
J
Marcelli
D
D
Mitteregger
A
A
Moscardo
V
V
Orlandini
G
G
Gatti
E
E
D019985:Benchmarking; D003628:Database Management Systems; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D012042:Registries; D006435:Renal Dialysis / Q000592:standards*; D012984:Software; D016019:Survival Analysis; D017749:Total Quality Management