First experiences with patient safety initiatives in Greek rural primary care. Action research by the LINNEAUS collaboration on patient safety in primary care.

Background: Accreditation of primary care organizations within Greece is still in its infancy. Our task in Greece was to attempt to introduce a patient safety initiative in a local area, focusing on developing minimum standards for accreditation, assess whether a pragmatic approach would engage physicians, and provide evidence of improvement.

Objective: To use monitoring of clinical performance as the basis for the launch of an accreditation system for primary care in Greece and to report on the process and lessons learnt.

Developing a European urban health indicator system: results of EURO-URHIS 1.

More than half of the world's population now live in cities, including over 70% in Europe. Cities bring opportunities but can be unhealthy places to live. The poorest urban dwellers live in the worst environments and are at the greatest risk of poor health outcomes.

PARENT joint action: increasing the added value of patient registries in a cross-border setting.

Patient registries are poorly interoperable and as a result data exchange or aggregation across organizations, regions and countries for secondary purposes (i.e. research and public health) is difficult to perform.

Flavonoid classes and risk of peripheral arterial occlusive disease: a case-control study in Greece.

Objective: To assess the relation between specific flavonoid classes and peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD), an important manifestation of atherosclerosis.

Design: Using data from a case-control study conducted in Greece in 1980 on the nutritional epidemiology of PAOD, we have exploited recently published databases on the content of foods in specific flavonoid classes to assess the relation between intake of these compounds and PAOD.

Setting: A major teaching hospital in Athens, Greece.

Implementing clinical protocols in oncology: quality gaps and the learning curve phenomenon.

Background: The quality improvement effort in clinical practice has focused mostly on 'performance quality', i.e. on the development of comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines.