Medical colleges have an obligation to ensure full participation in Clinical Quality Registries

Medical colleges have an obligation to ensure full participation in Clinical Quality Registries C linical Quality Registries (CQR) systemically collect health-related information that can be used to monitor, benchmark and improve patient care.Historically, most have been quality assurance activities that collected data over a year and reported up to another year later.Near real-time, longitudinal quality improvement CQRs are now preferred, 1 and there is abundant evidence that CQRs improve outcomes and are cost-effective. [2][4] The cornerstone of a successful CQR is data quality. 5,6lthough only a minority of CQRs are managed by medical colleges, almost all will have college representatives on their management committee.We argue that colleges should use their position to ensure high quality data, which requires full participation, high case ascertainment and data completeness.Poor quality data can provide misleading reassurance, perhaps leading to incorrect conclusions.A participation rate of at least 95% is recommended. 6In many countries, authorised CQRs are mandated. 2 As the loss of even a small number of cases can have an impact on results, many audits in the United Kingdom have an exemption to patient opt-out provisions. 7he importance of data quality is so critical that CQRs should report compliance. 1 Since 2014, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) has published a series of documents related to CQRs.The most recent was the revised 2024 Framework. 1 This mirrored the federal Department of Health, Disability and Ageing 2020-2030 CQR strategy. 8 The barriers to participation have been repeatedly identified in these and many other publications. 6,9They include inadequate ethics approval process; the variable, inconsistent and often unreasonable demands of site-specific approval; the constraints of qualified privilege; the barriers to data sharing; and the disproportionate imbalance of preventing the potential leak of individual patient data against the much greater community gain.The lack of secure, protected funding has been particularly problematic.