[Monitoring and surgical quality. Status and proposal for a national strategy].

Optimisation of quality in surgery requires knowledge of outcome data, the process of care and the structure/organisation. Based upon the unique patient registration system in Denmark combined with a predominantly "single-payer" system, a proposal is made for a nation-wide system to monitor surgical outcome, followed by adjustments to the process of care/reorganisation where required within a National Surgical Board, which is represented by hospital administrators, the surgical scientific societies and the Danish Health Board.