Abstract
Although guidelines for the assessment and treatment of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence have been available in Germany for several years, there are barely any data on adherence to guidelines in national routine care. Therefore, the study aimed at a nationwide evaluation of guideline adherence (GA) for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in German routine care in various groups of health care providers (HCPs). Besides a detailed description of GA, the study focused on examining possible differences between professional groups. Furthermore, data based on global self-reports of clinicians were compared with ratings of documented care in individual patients. Protocols of 73 clinicians regarding their handling of ADHD in routine care for 167 patients were rated according to German guideline recommendations for ADHD care. GA was measured as the proportion of components fulfilled in each individual patient as documented by the HCP. The results were compared to a preceding interview with clinicians regarding their GA. Multilevel models were constructed to detect differences in GA between professional groups. Based on mandatory guideline components, adherence rates of 38.9–72.7% were found and classified as moderate (33.3% < GA ≤ 66.6%) to high (GA > 66.6%). The comparison of the GA between the professional groups generally yielded only small differences. Correlations between GA reported globally by the HCPs and GA documented and rated for individual cases were low. Overall, most rates of GA for ADHD in German routine care lay within a moderate range. Targets for enhancement of GA may be the involvement of teachers and schools in the treatment process, the implementation of psychoeducational methods in general, as well as a careful examination of patients, including monitoring of treatment effects during titration trials. The development of further strategies to monitor the quality of ADHD routine care is needed.
Highlights
National guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been developed in many countries (e.g. [1,2,3,4,5]), including Germany [6, 7]
The sample of the n = 73 health care providers (HCPs) who completed both phases comprised a significantly greater proportion of women (p = 0.020), of HCPs who were still in training (p ≤ 0.001), and of HCPs who were participating in additional ADHD contracts with health insurance companies (p ≤ 0.001) compared to the n = 290 HCPs who participated in the first phase only (Online Resource 3, Table S6)
No significant differences concerning the globally reported guideline adherence (GA) of the HCPs were found when comparing the first wave of n = 275 HCPs with the subsequently recruited n = 88 HCPs, or when comparing the n = 290 HCPs who participated in first phase only with the n = 73 HCPs who completed both phases (Online Resource 3, Table S7)
Summary
National guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been developed in many countries (e.g. [1,2,3,4,5]), including Germany [6, 7]. National guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been developed in many countries Guidelines have been published on a European level [8,9,10]. Several recommendations and practice parameters for the assessment and treatment of ADHD have been released Based on guidelines of the German Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy [6], the German Association for Paediatrics [7] and practice parameters for the assessment and treatment of ADHD [15], the German ADHD network developed a unified practice protocol [16]. In 2018, new evidence and consensus-based German guidelines were released [17].
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