Impact of clinical registries on quality of patient care and clinical outcomes: A systematic review

BACKGROUND: Clinical quality registries (CQRs) are playing an increasingly important role in improving health outcomes and reducing health care costs. CQRs are established with the purpose of monitoring quality of care, providing feedback, benchmarking performance, describing pattern of treatment, reducing variation and as a tool for conducting research. OBJECTIVES: To synthesise the impact of clinical quality registries (CQRs) as an 'intervention' on (I) mortality/survival; (II) measures of outcome that reflect a process or outcome of health care; (III) health care utilisation; and (IV) healthcare-related costs. METHODS: The following electronic databases were searched: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, CINAHL and Google Scholar. In addition, a review of the grey literature and a reference check of citations and reference lists within articles was undertaken…