«Health system»

A main goal of SwiSCI is to establish a reliable epidemiological database for SCI that may inform Swiss social and health policy regarding measures to prevent SCI as well as to anticipate likely increases in the future demand on resources for external support and specialized care.

To that purpose the study aims to provide reliable estimates of key epidemiological indicators related to mortality, morbidity and functioning for SCI and the demographic, geographic and other variation in relation to the health system in these statistics.

The Health Services Research group at Swiss Paraplegic Research investigates and intends to improve how persons with spinal cord injury utilize health care services.

Disabled patients can be high users of medical care, often require services from multidisciplinary teams and bring with them multiple needs and expectations. The needs may not all be met within the setting offered by the health care provider. In a system that mainly focuses on cure rather than the improvement and the lived experience, losses in the perceived quality of care are to be expected.