Developing and implementing a relational database for heart failure outcomes in an integrated healthcare system.

A need to capture patient-specific data related to heart failure outcomes led to the development of a relational database to allow for data entry at the point of care. This database provided standardization of data collection at four of the system's acute care hospitals. The data are reported to the Heart Failure Clinical Effectiveness Team to track indicators for demonstration of best practice outcomes, internal benchmarking, and identification of opportunities for performance improvement on a healthcare system level. The database development, steps toward implementation, data collection tools, and the utilization of the outcomes data are discussed.