ABSTRACT
Interest in measuring health outcomes has a long history, closely related to concerns over the quality of (hospital) care (Rosser 1988). Florence Nightingale introduced a daily ‘outcome synopsis’ of relieved/unrelieved/ dead. The American surgeon Codman from the Massachusetts General Hospital suggested in 1910 that all patients should be recalled after one year to see if their treatment had achieved its initial objective. Codman’s concluding question, ‘What happens to the patient?’, is still relevant to current practice.
