History

In 1995, an international panel of resuscitation experts met at Utstein Abbey in Norway to develop standardized guidelines for reporting in-hospital resuscitation events.

The National Registry of CardioPulmonary Resuscitation (NRCPR) is based on these Utstein-style guidelines. Using this standard format makes it easy to collect consistent, relevant data from medical records, monitor performance internally, and make external comparisons.

NRCPR is sponsored by the American Heart Association and managed by Digital Innovation, Inc., a company with extensive experience managing national registries.

This valuable project was initiated in 1999 with a beta version that was tested by a representative group of 22 hospitals. In early 2000, the NRCPR distributed software to participating hospitals, offered training sessions, and began receiving resuscitation event data. The first comparative reports were distributed in the spring of 2000.