A PROPOSAL FOR A CENTRALIZED PATIENT RECORD DATABASE - THE NEED TO IDENTIFY PATIENT DATA ELEMENTS TO MEASURE COSTS, CLINICAL OUTCOMES AND BENCHMARKING

Although health care industry benchmarking is a feasible and worthwhil e objective, the lack of consistent and accessible data makes it extre mely difficult to do any reasonable comparisons. Therefore, this paper concentrates on the first phase of research pertaining to the identif ication of data measures and information requirements solely. We concl ude with an investigation into whether the creation of a centralized d atabase is a necessary and sufficient condition to begin benchmarking in the health industry. Future research will focus on these areas.