© 2010 Brighton Collaboration
The development of health care associated registers in Finland started around 1960 when also the hospital discharge registering was started. Nowadays the register is called The Finnish Care Register for Health Care (HILMO) and it comprises information on all inpatient hospitalisations and outpatient visits at all public hospitals in Finland.
The database is kept by the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and covers the whole country. It includes variables such as age, sex, dates of admission and discharge, speciality, institution, and diagnosis. The diagnoses are classified by the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10 from 1996 onwards.
Due to marked improvements in coding during the late 1990´s the quality of data in HILMO has improved, and therefore, for the background rates, data from 2004-2008 are utilised.