OUTCOMES RESEARCH USING A VOLUNTARY GENERIC REGISTRY

The Pediatric Cardiac Care Consortium is a cooperative program develop ed to assess the quality of care being given to pediatric patients wit h congenital heart disease, The participating hospitals pool their cli nical information to allow statistically meaningful analyses and compa risons. A method has been developed to allow centers to compare operat ive mortality in a way that takes operative risk factors into account. The Pediatric Cardiac Care Consortium has developed an acceptable sta ndard of care models in pediatric cardiology, established a method for translating clinical data into useful practise information for evalua ting services, and served as a model for other outcome analysis progra ms. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.