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CH-IQI Dashboard

Methodology

This document explains where the Swiss Hospital Interventions (CH-IQI) data originates, how it is processed, and how each indicator is derived before being visualised on the dashboard.

1. Purpose

This dashboard was created as a personal project using two publicly available database from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, and from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. The primary purpose of this dashboard is for users to easily browse through the number of cases for different medical procedures that occur in every Swiss hospital. This allows them to know the volume of cases in their local hospitals, and to compare those with other hospitals. This is public data, but it is not easily interpretable for the general public, as it is downloadable as a large CSV file from the FOPH website. The intended user is therefore the general public who wants to more easily access and interpret this data. The dashboard includes 2023 procedure volumes and a separate explorer for published 2024 mortality indicators, with contextual warnings to avoid treating the results as a simple hospital ranking.

2. Sources

Hospital indicators (CH-IQI)
Source: Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG/OFSP/UFSP)
Dataset: CH-IQI 2023 procedure volumes and 2024 mortality indicators

Population by canton
Source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office
Dataset: Structure of the permanent resident population by canton, 2010–2023

3. Database

The population database consists of the “Structure of the permanent resident population by canton, 2010-2023”. For the purpose of the population-based procedure comparisons, only the 2023 permanent resident population was used because the procedure volumes are also from 2023.

The CH-IQI (Swiss Inpatient Quality Indicators) database is published annually. It provides a standardized national set of hospital quality indicators that are derived from inpatient discharge data. The database is extensive and consists of not only number of cases for each hospital and medical procedure, but also various categories of quality and process indicators. Each indicator (e.g., hip replacement, stroke treatment, pneumonia) is defined according to the G-IQI/CH-IQI Version 5.4 specification which aligns with the German IQM (Initiative Qualitätsmedizin) system.

For each indicator, the dataset typically includes:

  • Observed values (e.g., number of cases, mortality rates, or complication rates)
  • Expected values and standardized ratios (SMR) (for indicators where risk adjustment is possible)
  • Process and complication indicators (e.g., proportion of minimally invasive operations or postoperative complications)
  • Quantitative information, such as case counts per hospital (used in this dashboard)
  • Minimum volume indicators, showing whether a hospital meets required minimum case thresholds for specific procedures

This dashboard uses the quantitative information component for 2023 procedure volumes and a separate set of published 2024 mortality indicators, including observed mortality, expected mortality, and standardized mortality ratios (SMR).

4. Data Preparation

4.1 Extraction and filtering (F-coded procedures)

The individual procedures are labeled with F codes for the number of cases. The description for each of these F codes is however in each respective language region where the hospital is located. I therefore had to manually categorize what language each description was in. To make the raw CSV easier to consume in the browser, I used a small data-preparation helper that trims the dataset down to just the F-coded interventions. It removes aggregate rows like national or cantonal totals, keeps only the key numeric columns (hospital ID, procedure code, year, and case count), sorts the records for reproducibility, and exports the result as projects/swiss-hospital-insights/assets/data/qip23_f_procedures.json. This produces a lightweight dataset usable by a browser that still contains all the essential information for visualization and comparison.

4.2 Extraction and filtering (mortality indicators)

The 2024 mortality explorer uses a separate browser-ready dataset, qip24_mortality_indicators.json, containing hospital-level case counts, observed mortality, expected mortality, SMR values, and published comments. A small multilingual catalogue supplies the indicator descriptions used in the interface.

4.3 Front-end loading and caching

The procedure explorer fetches qip23_f_procedures.json, hospital_coordinates.json, and the population CSV, then converts them into in-memory maps keyed by hospital and procedure. The mortality explorer loads qip24_mortality_indicators.json and its multilingual catalogue independently. Each explorer can therefore serve search results and KPI cards without further network requests.

5. Indicators and Calculations

The dashboard includes a small set of simple and interpretable metrics:

  • Hospital case volume (count)
  • Canton total volume (count): Sum of hospital volumes within each canton for a selected procedure.
  • Per-capita rate (cases per 100,000 residents)
  • Share of canton volume
  • National totals
  • Centralisation HHI Index
  • University Hospital share of cases
  • Per-hospital share of the selected procedure
  • Observed mortality for published 2024 mortality indicators
  • Expected mortality and standardized mortality ratio (SMR)

6. Limitations

This dashboard includes procedure volumes and selected mortality indicators, but it is not suitable for ranking hospitals or drawing conclusions about overall quality of care. Case mix, transfers, specialization, low case volumes, and other clinical factors can influence mortality results and must be considered when interpreting the data.

The CH-IQI data itself is based on annual hospital submissions and may contain reporting delays or minor inconsistencies between institutions. Although the dataset is standardized by the Federal Office of Public Health, hospital names and codes occasionally change between years, requiring manual reconciliation. For location data, coordinates and canton affiliations are derived from public sources and verified manually, which introduces the possibility of positional inaccuracies.

Procedure volumes and population comparisons use 2023 data. The mortality explorer uses published 2024 indicators. Changes in hospital structures, service offerings, or regional population distributions after those reporting periods are not reflected.

Finally, this is an independent personal project and not an official visualization by the Federal Office of Public Health or the Federal Statistical Office. While care was taken to ensure correctness and transparency, any interpretation or conclusion drawn from the dashboard remains the responsibility of the user.