Introduction: National clinical databases are a tool for quality improvement in clinical divisions. Furthermore, they can be used to make the quality of health care contributions visible to the population, as part of the free choice of hospital. Using data from one of the Danish nationwide databases, this article is the first to illustrate the potential economic resource gains from the use of these databases.
Materials and methods: The calculations performed are based on the Danish Hysterectomy Database. This database has selected quality indicators and measures for quality improvements for a three years period and include reduction of complications to one in three (from 18% to 6%), reduction of admission to one in two (from 4 to 2 days) and reduction of rehospitalisation and reoperation to one in two (from 6% to 3%).
Results: Provided the proposed improvements are achieved, the expected resource gain will be approximately Dkr. 22 million (depending on the method of calculation). In-bed per day charges and "hotel charges" may vary considerably among hospitals.
Discussion: Every year, Dkr. 15 million are allocated to the national clinical databases, and in 2003, 34 different databases received financial support. The maximum amount that each database can receive is Dkr. 500,000. The amount currently allocated to quality monitoring is small compared to the potential resource gains from these databases and the annual expenditures by the Danish health care sector, which amount to a total of Dkr. 48 billion.