Table 2.
Available registries on healthcare utilization by EU country
| Country and Name of registry | Availability of healthcare utilization data1 | |||||||||||||
| In-patient hospital care utilization | Out-patient care utilization | Surgical operations | Prescribed medicine | |||||||||||
| All hospital admission | Acute care hospital admission | Length of stay (all) | Length of stay (acute) | All outpatient contacts | Hospital day cases | ER | GP | Medical Specialist | Dentists | All procedures (in-patients + day cases) | Surgical in-patients | Surgical daycases | Purchases of prescribed medicine | |
| Italy | ||||||||||||||
| Hospital Information System | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||
| Sistema Informativo Emergenza Sanitaria | X | |||||||||||||
| Sias (Sistema Informativo Assistenza Specialistica) | X | |||||||||||||
| Luxembourg | ||||||||||||||
| Hospital Registry | X | X | X | |||||||||||
| Netherlands | ||||||||||||||
| Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR) | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Netherlands Information Network of General Practice | X | |||||||||||||
| Poland | ||||||||||||||
| Hospital Discharge Form | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||
| Slovenia | ||||||||||||||
| Database on Hospital Treatments | X | X | X | X | X | |||||||||
| Sweden | ||||||||||||||
| National Patient Discharge Registry | X | X | X | X | ||||||||||
| The Swedish Prescribed Drug Registry | X | |||||||||||||
All registries have national coverage except for Sistema Informativo Emergenza Sanitaria (Italy) which only covers three-four regions.
1Including mental health care and rehabilitation but excluding nursery home care.
Limitation of data: Netherlands, Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR): From 2006 onwards, HDR has limited coverage of hospitals (non-response of 10-13% of discharges), which affects the linkage. From 2005/2006 ca. 30% of the hospitals do not register procedures; so these are estimated.
Note: Estonia has targeted to launch digital health record system by 2012 which will enable Estonia to start analyses that base on individual data, including personal characteristics.