New position paper „Treatment Outcomes (Quality) Registries“

The quality of patient treatment outcomes is in the focus of the healthcare systems which are striving for quality and cost efficiency. Moreover, the data on treatment outcomes represents the foundation for the informed decisions on investing healthcare budget funds into the most effective and efficient medicines, medical devices and equipment.

In Croatia the purpose of the existing registries maintained by the Croatian Institute for Public Health (HZJZ), e.g. registries for cancer and diabetes, is to collect statistics in order to improve healthcare, establish prevalence and incidence of the disease and record morbidity and mortality on the national level. However, in order to ensure systematic collecting of patient outcomes data, the Quality Registries need to be introduced.

Experiences from Sweden have shown that the benefits of quality registries are far reaching as they represent an invaluable tool in improving clinical practice and quality of patient treatment outcomes – namely, their introduction produces direct benefits to patient health and efficient healthcare spending.

Croatia falls far behind in this area and introduction of Quality Registries is urgently needed to accomplish significant improvements in the treatment quality of the diseases which are largest burden and leading causes of death in the country such as ischemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, lung and bowel cancer and diabetes.

Recommendations for introduction of quality registries are available following the link.