Ways of developing quality indicators in cancer care — opportunities, challenges and limitations for the Polish healthcare system

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present possible ways of developing quality indicators in oncological care in the Polish healthcare system based on practice from other countries. The development of indicators in the healthcare systems presented in this paper is a process following several stages. Initially, at the planning stage, the clinical area to be assessed is selected and teams responsible for developing the indicators are organized. This is followed by the development stage in which the measurement team prioritizes and selects clinical indicators on the basis of documentation and knowledge gained from the scientific literature. After selecting the target clinical indicators, the specifications for each measure are operationalized, along with inclusion and exclusion criteria for the target population, and data sources are identified. In each of the foreign healthcare systems analyzed, determination of the final indicators was preceded by extensive clinical and social consultations. The use of clinical indicators to assess quality is an important approach in the process of assessing the quality of cancer care. Thanks to the introduction of quality indicators, participants in the healthcare system (regulators, clinicians, patients, managers of medical institutions) can obtain reliable information that is necessary for defining priorities, modifying methods of determining benefits, benchmarking, making informed choices, and improving the quality of oncological care.