Swedish quality registry for pain rehabilitation: purpose, design, implementation and characteristics of referred patients.

OBJECTIVE In order to facilitate comparisons of pain rehabilitation programmes in Sweden and to enable audit spirals for single programmes as well as outcome studies, the Swedish Association for Rehabilitation Medicine initiated a national quality registry in 1995. PATIENTS Referred for rehabilitation due to pain-related disability. METHODS The registry collects standardized self-reports before assessment, after rehabilitation and one year later, covering demographic, educational and psychometric data, pain intensity, physical disability and life satisfaction. Sick leave data are collected from the National Insurance Board before and up to two years after rehabilitation. At each programme unit self-reports are processed into individual assessment profiles relevant to plan rehabilitation. Data are sent annually to the central registry for analysis and compared with "return to work" data. Each unit can compare its results with national means. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION The organization of the registry is described. Data indicating that contextual factors, but not pain characteristics, depression or activity limitations vary between patients referred to different centres, makes comparisons difficult. As of 2007, data from the multidisciplinary assessment of 19,833 patients have been collected. A total of 7289 patients attended a rehabilitation programme, generating two more self-reports. A limitation of the study is a lack of follow-up data from some units.