Monitoring of activities in Danish office-based psychiatry

On January 1, 1996, 16 psychiatric specialists in Danish office-based psych iatry initiated a monitoring programme in which they register the activitie s in their private psychiatric practices. The variables include, e.g. date of referral, date of first contact, date of discharge, dates of contacts du ring treatment period, sex and age of patient, geographical code, type of t reatment, and diagnoses. Data are, on a regular basis, transferred to the e pidemiological research institution, Department of Psychiatric Demography i n Aarhus, Denmark. Following the audit principles, once a year each partici pant receives his own statistics compared with the whole group's statistics for quality assurance purposes. Besides this the monitoring database is us ed for different epidemiological research projects and, as the project runs , more epidemiological studies will be possible. On 31 December 1998, 22 ps ychiatrists participated. The group is interested in contact with both Dani sh and international psychiatrists working in office-based psychiatry. For this please contact: Jens Thimmer, Ostergade 28, 6950 Ringkobing, Denmark.