DEVELOPMENT OF THE CORE DATASET - QUALIFY ASSURANCE IN THE GERMAN INTENSIVE-CARE MEDICINE RESULTS AND EXPERIENCES OF A MULTICENTER STUDY

On behalf of the ''German Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Car e'' (DGAI) and in cooperation with the ''Commission for Quality Contro l and Data Processing'' in 1994 we started with the project on the dev elopment of a Core Dataset for Quality Assurance in the field of Inten sive Care Medicine. After a primary definition of the contents and aim s of the project, we tested this data set in two succeeding multi-cent er studies. Based on the know-ledge gained from the first studies we r educed the original data set significantly. With this modified dataset we started a second multi-center study. In a period of 6 months 2383 patients with altogether 15383 days of medical treatment were register ed in 21 clinics with different levels of provision, The average docum entation time for each patient was 2.5 minutes for the daily documenta tion. As in the first study the results reveal distinct patterns of th e various clinics which can be used for an internal and external compa rison, Taken from a significantly bigger collective, the following res ults of the study can be shown: This concept can be integrated into th e daily routine of an ICU very well and the data set enables us to mak e valid statements regarding internal and external quality assurance.