Registry data for cross-country comparisons of migrants' healthcare utilization in the EU: a survey study of availability and content

Table 2 Available registries on healthcare utilization by EU country

Country and Name of registry	Availability of healthcare utilization data¹
	In-patient hospital care utilization					Out-patient care utilization					Surgical operations			Prescribed medicine
	All hospital admission	Acute care hospital admission	Length of stay (all)	Length of stay (acute)	All outpatient contacts	Hospital day cases	ER	GP	Medical Specialist	Dentists	All procedures (in-patients + day cases)	Surgical in-patients	Surgical daycases	Purchases of prescribed medicine
Italy
Hospital Information System	X	X				X	X				X	X	X
Sistema Informativo Emergenza Sanitaria							X
Sias (Sistema Informativo Assistenza Specialistica)									X
Luxembourg
Hospital Registry	X										X	X
Netherlands
Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR)	X	X	X	X		X					X	X	X
Netherlands Information Network of General Practice								X
Poland
Hospital Discharge Form	X		X	X		X					X	X	X
Slovenia
Database on Hospital Treatments	X	X				X	X				X
Sweden
National Patient Discharge Registry	X					X	X				X
The Swedish Prescribed Drug Registry														X

All registries have national coverage except for Sistema Informativo Emergenza Sanitaria (Italy) which only covers three-four regions.
¹Including mental health care and rehabilitation but excluding nursery home care.
Limitation of data: Netherlands, Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR): From 2006 onwards, HDR has limited coverage of hospitals (non-response of 10-13% of discharges), which affects the linkage. From 2005/2006 ca. 30% of the hospitals do not register procedures; so these are estimated.
Note: Estonia has targeted to launch digital health record system by 2012 which will enable Estonia to start analyses that base on individual data, including personal characteristics.

ISSN: 1472-6963