Preliminary report of data collection in hospital quality assurance programs--a project of the Association of Hospitals of the Czech Republic.

Objectives: This was the first attempt of the association representing all acute care hospitals in the Czech Republic to collect mutual data which might be used for quality assurance (QA) purposes and which might lead to the development of national standards of care which could be used for hospital accreditation. Data collected included information which was available universally and which could be measured; in addition, information was intended to be similar in each hospital. In most cases, the data collection systems were based on financial information and data had to be identified which might be used for QA purposes, rather than being able to design a system specific for QA purposes.

Development of patient satisfaction surveys in the Czech Republic: a new approach to an old theme.

Although patient satisfaction surveys have become well established features of Western healthcare systems, free expression was suppressed for much of the past 50 years in the Czech Republic. As part of a quality assurance program established at the University Hospital Kralovske Vinohrady in Prague, and under the direction of a sociologist, a patient satisfaction pilot study was instituted as a precursor to a broader and ongoing survey. A cohort of 150 patients who were discharged following hospitalization on one of three medical or surgical services were given the opportunity to respond to a 36 item questionnaire devised as a result of study of similar instruments, 101 completed the questionnaire.

[Computer tomography of the renal bed after nephrectomy].

An early diagnosis of the tumour relapse after performed nephrectomy for a malignant kidney tumour is necessary in order to influence further fate of the patient. The most suitable method for determining a correct diagnosis is computer tomography. The authors present a cohort of 79 patients with a pathological finding in 21 of them.