Continuous improvement

Continuously increasing quality means aiming for better patient outcomes and a better patient experience of care, supporting employees so that these goals can be achieved.

Optimal care for patients

Continuous improvement implies challenging oneself, learning, increasing one's skills, promoting and adapting to changes, so as to fulfill the institution's mandate and ensure the best care for patients, systematically and sustainably.

Importance of measurement

Fully endorsing what Lord William Thomson Kelvin expressed in this celebrated phrase of his, EOC invests in indicator and reporting systems based on the information sensed through internal management and reporting applications, as well as the computerized patient record.

The information collected, reprocessed in full compliance with current data protection and privacy regulations, makes it possible to objectively evaluate the performance and services offered, identify areas for improvement, monitor trends over time, and provide decision-making support.

Clinical records

To monitor and promote the quality of services provided to patients on an ongoing basis, EOC hospitals set up clinical registries. These registries require the collection of information related to the health and pathology of patients under their care. Data can be collected anonymously or coded.

In anonymous data collection, it is not possible to trace the patient to whom these data relate in any way. In coded collection, on the other hand, the data are linked to an identification code-in the EOC the case number-which by means of a decoding or linking key, known only to authorized persons within the hospital and subject to professional secrecy, makes it possible to trace them back to the specific patient. Under no circumstances is the linking key disclosed to third parties without the explicit (signed) consent of the patient or his or her representative.

In some cases-for example, in the case of Highly Specialized Medicine mandates or in the context of certifications-the data collected via clinical register may be passed on to the relevant bodies whose task is to verify the quality of the services provided. The information is passed on anonymously or coded.

The SIRIS prosthesis registry

Membership in the SIRIS prosthesis registry for hip replacement, knee replacement, and spine replacement surgery is mandatory, as it is included in the list of mandatory quality measures at the Swiss level.

This registry, in order to be able to fulfill its objectives, also requires the collection of patient's named information. For this reason, the operating surgeon will expressly ask the patient to sign an informed consent form, by which he or she consents-or does not consent-to the recording of his or her data in the national SIRIS registry.

Your contribution is important

By processing his or her data-in full compliance with privacy and data protection-the patient makes a valuable contribution to improvement. The patient of course has the right to object, at any time and without this choice precluding or affecting treatment, to the collection of his or her data. Such opposition must be made clear to the referring physician in the department. In the absence of a clear objection, data collected during the inpatient stay will be used for the purpose of improving the quality of care.

The English version of this page was created with the aid of automatic translation tools and may contain errors and omissions.
The original version is the page in Italian.