Data quality within the Netherlands Heart Registration: Ready for prime time?

Excerpt

Public reporting of demographic, procedural and outcome data in patients with cardiovascular disease increases transparency and can enable an improvement in quality of care. The Netherlands Heart Registration (NHR) collects data regarding all invasive cardiac interventional, electrophysiological and surgical procedures in 71 hospitals, including 30 cardiac intervention and heart centres across the Netherlands. This information is also an important source of data for clinical research. Using real-world data has several advantages compared to using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Foremost, RCTs usually have numerous inclusion and exclusion criteria and are therefore at higher risk of selection bias compared to registry-based studies. When using registry data, either for quality monitoring or clinical research, data completeness and accuracy are of the utmost importance. …