During a consultation, the physician performs a standardized clinical assesment. This encorporates clinical and lab parameters as well as x-ray images (for RA hands and feet, for AS cervical spine lateral view, lumbar spine apical and lateral view and overview of the hip). At the same time, information on disease activity, pain and medical treatment, as well as potential adverse events is collected. The patient fills in a standardized questionnaire on his or her general health including socio-economic variablies.
Directly after data entry, different types of feedback displaying the medication, course of disease and effect of treatment are available.

A prerequisite for data entry at into an SCQM registry is an informed consent form signed by the patient.
Since May 2009, the SCQM data can be entered online. This leads to a simplification of the process both for physicians and for patients. Immediately after data entry, the data is integrated into different types of feed-back reports, displaying the course of disease up to the current visit. Physicians that already have patients in the SCQM registry before the online version is available, will automatically be sent their user account details (by e-mail). Physicians, that have not yet enrolled patients in the SCQM can request a user account. 

The request for a patient user account is entered via the responsible rheumatologist. Further information on online data entry for patients can be found under "Info online DB" (only German and French). If your patient prefers to enter the data on paper questionnaires, he or she can continue to do so. Patient and physician can, after having activated their user accounts, enter the data directly into the online database. As soon as data are entered, these are visualized in the so-called feed-back report. These feed-back reports are accessible online at any time and can be used as a base for discussion with the patient, for filing the visit data in the medical records or as information for the responsible general physician.

X-ray images are sent to the SCQM on CDs or as x-ray films. At the SCQM the images are scored by a trained member of staff and then stored in an x-ray data base. Immediately after scoring, the x-ray score becomes visible in the feed-back report.