Local registries in general/family practice
Cindrić, J.
Acta Medica Croatica Casopis Hravatske Akademije Medicinskih Znanosti 61(1): 101-104
2007
ISSN/ISBN: 1330-0164 PMID: 17593649 Document Number: 610633
Entering medical records into registries of all sorts has always been a part of everyday work of a general/family physician. There is a distinction between public/population registries on the one hand, and internal, local registries on the other hand. Local registries refer to the catchment population of a particular general/family practice. While keeping population-registries has become a routine with a high level of uniformity in collecting, delivering, recording, analyzing and controlling information, there are no recommendations or standards for keeping local registries, although their importance as well as indisputable necessity have been recognized. They are invaluable for providing an insight into the condition and history of a particular disease in a particular area, planning and taking preventive measures and activities, supervising therapy and medical treatment, as well as for statistical analyses and scientific studies. The most important registry in the field of general practice is the one called "List of health care under the supervision of chosen general/family physicians", which can serve as an index for any other individual record or record of diseases by name kept at a particular general/family practice. Although local registries have "evolved" from notebooks into modern informatic databases, the problem of up-to-dateness cannot be solved until the whole health care system has been connected for competent and authorized persons to be able to record changes of data where and when they take place.