Eight years' experience of clinical activity in an outpatient fracture clinic.

Major changes to the method of planning and provision of health care in Britain have led to the introduction of contracts as the main means through which services are procured. Never before has the need for accurate and comprehensive clinical information been greater. Yet comprehensive outpatient information, though planned, is not yet available, and there is relatively little experience of such systems which have been introduced in individual localities. Fracture clinic patients are an important group of outpatient, not least because interventions are often undertaken as an integral part of the outpatient episode. This is relevant for estimating resource use and for pricing, but until now has been 'hidden' work as far as conventional information systems are concerned. This study describes the establishment and manifestation of a clinical information system based on a fracture clinic serving the majority of a population of 850,000. Information was gathered over 8 years on 61,635 patients, who had 72,984 diagnoses and received 93,878 treatments. An information system of the type described in this study can be of great value as part of the contracting process (for both purchasers and providers of orthopaedic services), as a basis for clinical audit and research, and to facilitate undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.