The assessment of quality health care provision is one of the imperative challenges that clinicians, decision-makers, and policy makers face in the heath arena.  So much of the data collected in today’s health care setting is focused around the structure and processes of improving practice.  This is undoubtedly an extremely important factor in health care; however, clinicians should also become more focused on the collection of outcomes data.  Everyday, clinicians are faced with the collection of outcomes data, which in the past has been done quite poorly.  With the introduction of a user-friendly prevalence database, it is anticipated that the collection of health outcomes data will improve.  This has prompted the development of such a database by The Joanna Briggs Institute, called POOL (Patient Outcomes On Line). POOL has been designed as an on-line database, for clinicians and health care organizations as an easy to use to use tool for the collection and storage of prevalence data.  Health professionals are able to track and demonstrate the achievement of particular patient outcomes within their facility, and to compare those outcomes with the industry average.The patient outcomes to be used in POOL are those such as prevalence of urinary tact infection, surgical wound infection, and pressure areas. The number of patient outcomes that can be measured is limitless.  This paper will discuss the benefits of collecting outcomes data and how this can lead to improved patient outcomes. 

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