ArticleQuality & safety in health care2003
Using routine comparative data to assess the quality of health care: understanding and avoiding common pitfalls.
Article in Quality & safety in health care, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Mental health treatment and access for emerging adults in Canada: a systematic review.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Are birth outcomes in low risk birth cohorts related to hospital birth volumes? A systematic review.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2021Pooled it
- Primary care physicians' attitudes to the adoption of electronic medical records: a systematic review and evidence synthesis using the clinical adoption framework.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2018Pooled it
- Identifying fall-related injuries in older adults using ICD-10 injury codes : Validation study of emergency department patients with and without subsequent hospitalization.Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie · 2026Article
- Individual Socioeconomic Measures and Change in HoNOS Scores among Persons Attending Adult Community Mental Health Services.Community mental health journal · 2026Article
- Routine data are not 'dirty' data: how to approach using routine data for research.BMJ health & care informatics · 2026Article
- Health problems of people with intellectual disabilities in general practice: dynamic cohort study between 2012 and 2021 with Dutch routine care data.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2026Article
- Mapping antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infections indicators for actionable benchmarking: a cross-network overview in a data-driven era.Antimicrobial resistance and infection control · 2025Review
- Utilisation of a cocreation methodology to develop claims-based indicators for feedback on implementation of comparative effectiveness research results into practice.BMJ open quality · 2025Article
- Impact of DRG payment reform on revenue and expenditure structure of public hospitals in China: evidence from difference-in-differences analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Tracking viral control in adolescents on antiretroviral therapy in Lusaka, Zambia: A retrospective cohort analysis.Southern African journal of HIV medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Transforming community-based primary health care delivery through comprehensive performance measurement and reporting: examining the influence of context.BMC primary care · 2024Article
- Do medical specialists accept claims-based Audit and Feedback for quality improvement? A focus group study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Quality of care in patients with hypertension: a retrospective cohort study of primary care routine data in Germany.BMC primary care · 2024Article
- Analysis of Medico-Legal Complaint Data: A Retrospective Study of Three Large Italian University Hospitals.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Association of hospital centrality in inter-hospital patient-sharing networks with patient mortality and length of stay.PloS one · 2023Article
- Emergency department performance assessment using administrative data: A managerial framework.PloS one · 2023Review
- Access to Surgery and Quality of Care for Acute Cholecystitis During the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021 - an Analysis of 12,545 Patients from a German-Wide Hospital Network.Journal of gastrointestinal surgery : official journal of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract · 2022Article
- Using primary care databases for addiction research: An introduction and overview of strengths and weaknesses.Addictive behaviors reports · 2022Review
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Measuring the quality of health care has become a major concern for funders and providers of health services in recent decades. One of the ways in which quality of care is currently assessed is by taking routinely collected data and analysing them quantitatively. The use of routine data has many advantages but there are also some important pitfalls. Collating numerical data in this way means that comparisons can be made--whether over time, with benchmarks, or with other healthcare providers (at individual or institutional levels of aggregation). Inevitably, such comparisons reveal variations. The natural inclination is then to assume that such variations imply rankings: that the measures reflect quality and that variations in the measures reflect variations in quality. This paper identifies reasons why these assumptions need to be applied with care, and illustrates the pitfalls with examples from recent empirical work. It is intended to guide not only those who wish to interpret comparative quality data, but also those who wish to develop systems for such analyses themselves.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.