To review operation results, surgeons had to scan through hundreds of pages in the book to locate particular operations or patients. No uniform method of reporting operations existed, and often crucial information such as complications, patient's health before the operation and patient's length of stay was omitted. Occasionally, incorrect patient numbers or information had been entered, making research difficult. To perform quality assurance with the 4th Dimension database, surgeons and secretaries enter information into the computer, including patient demographics, complication factors, mortality rates, types of operations performed and average length of stay in the hospital. The comprehensive coding system in 4th Dimension allows users to specify exact details about the problem and grade a patient's health before an operation.
Some diseases have multiple codes, all of which apply to different but pertinent conditions.
After the user chooses appendicitis, the database lists all ten possibilities and codes the user's choice accordingly. The medical code library is over 28 MB in size. In fact, in a Belfast, Ireland hospital, 4th Dimension sends information to the hospital VAX so all departments in the hospital can use the same data. The Belfast hospital is just one example of how the database can be tailored to fulfill the exact needs of each doctor and hospital. Doctors can write personalized mail-merge discharge letters and report summaries with the 4D Write word processor.