[From records to indicators: the management of health care information production in hospitals].

Utilization of health care indicators in the monitoring of health system performance has become increasingly important in the last decades. The expansion of the public National Health System, Sistema Unico de Saúde/SUS, growth of the private health sector and implementation of specific types of health care regulation models stimulated the utilization of indicators in the evaluation of hospital care quality and performance and proposals of national indicator systems. This was not accompanied with a corresponding investment in the conditions in which the needed data and information are produced in health services. The objective of this article is to identify some of the necessary conditions for health care performance indicator quality in hospitals: a pervasive institutional culture favoring clinical, administrative and research information and adequate organization and administration of clinical registers, hospital statistics and hospital information systems. No ready made universal hospital information packages will be able to achieve this, and each institution has to develop the ability to incorporate and use, according to specific needs and contexts, capabilities and material and human resources that will turn information management into a dynamic process and part of hospital management in general.