Are clinical registries an effective tool for hospital health services to address unwarranted clinical variation?

To map clinical registries within the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN); and to identify how these registries were currently used for addressing unwarranted clinical variation in care. An online survey was sent to all Heads of Units (HoUs) within CALHN. The survey addressed participation, type of data, reporting processes and use of the clinical registries for research, quality assurance (QA), quality improvement (QI) and clinical variation in health care. Twenty-six HoUs responded (26%); 25 contributed to a clinical registry (96%); all provided data to more than one registry, but only 34.6% had an existing financial and governance arrangement with the network. Health outcomes were the most common datapoints; 77% of all data were collected manually; and 38.5% of data analysis was risk adjusted. Access to aggregated data varied across the registries; and 65.4% of reports included benchmarks and outliers. Clinical registries were used for research in 65.4%, and QA and QI in 73.1 and 69.2%, respectively. Most used external comparators and measured clinical variation, but there was marked inconsistency in the exploring clinical variation, improving care and reporting activities. Based on this sample, clinical registries within CALHN did not currently appear to be a reliable resource to consistently address unwarranted clinical variation but were shown to be valuable resources for research and quality initiatives at a high level. Further research is required to facilitate effective integration of clinical registries with administrative and quality systems.