Registration of Health Data: A Gold Mine for Research about Health Service Utilization

Abstract

In a recent issue of Central European Journal of Paediatrics, Michelsen et al. provided a comprehensive overview of health care services use among persons who have cerebral palsy (CP) in Denmark (1). The results suggested that children with CP more often visited general practitioners as well as specialist physicians at primary, secondary and tertiary health care level compared to adults with CP. Nevertheless, there was no appreciable difference between children and adults with CP in terms of the admissions to the emergency department (1). Similar to all former Yugoslav republics, all permanent residents in Denmark have universal health care access and a unique personal identification number through which each individual could be traced within the health care system. Organized and systematic data collection by means of registers, such as the National Patient Register or the National Health Service Register in Denmark (2) allows for an almost complete insight into the patterns of health care utilization and needs of specific groups as well as the population as a whole. A recent study by Klawonn et al. (3) suggested that research focusing on CP has been increasing,