title: Quality control in management of pain.
abstract: Since 1987 several pain clinics in The Netherlands have started with some kind of computer-assisted recording of data, mainly for purposes of quality control. However, this has not yet led to routinely generated reports about the quality of these clinics because a consensus on how to assess quality in pain-treatment is missing. Using classical system-development methods a global specification for an information system for quality assessment was defined on which a prototype application was based. Various changes were adopted into this prototype, which ultimately resulted in explicit requirements stating: 1. Which data to record, 2. What organisational prerequisites to fulfil for such a system, 3. The user-interface, and 4. Interactions with other information systems. The final application was implemented in a number of pain clinics where its usefulness in quality control is currently assessed.
authors.affiliation: UMC Nijmegen, Department of Medical Informatics, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: W S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Tuil
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: ten Hoopen
authors.forename: E J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: van der Haring
authors.forename: P E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Zanstra
mesh_terms: D019985:Benchmarking; D003625:Data Collection; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration*; D018710:Pain Clinics / Q000458:organization & administration*; D059408:Pain Management; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012985:Software Design; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface