Continuous improvement in anesthesiological quality documentation.

Objective: The analysis of result variation in quality benchmarking projects in anaesthesia showed that ASA classification was often the most relevant parameter in distinction of risk groups. Thus the parallel description of the risk level of a patient both with the ASA classification and with particular risk parameters was examined critically. The hypothesis was tested that the documentation of both parameter groups in the running quality benchmarking projects does not lead to relevant information gain. As a pragmatic consequence we see the possibility to reduce the core dataset with significant reduction of the documentation workload. Methods: With machine readable protocols or online computer documentation nearly all anaesthesias in hospitals in Hamburg were documented with the DGAI core data set and transferred to the project office of EQS Hamburg since 1992. We compared the predictory power of single and combined risk assessments for the incidence of particular AVBs (grade 3 to 5) in elective anaesthesias with that of ASA-classification. Results: In 257 878 elective anaesthesias AVBs were documented in 14.5% of cases. Besides one exception no superior prediction power for AVE incidence could be demonstrated for any special risk assessment as compared with the ASA-classification. This is also true for the AVBs decompensated cardiac insufficiency, myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism and cardiac arrest which are associated with high lethality. Conclusion: We assume that the documentation of risk factors in the core data set as predictors can be abandoned without major loss of information. This would be a first step towards reduction of the amount of data in quality assurance to get a core of especially meaningful parameters. It would lead to an increase in acceptance of the method and thus to an increase in the validity of its results.