Actual healthcare quality criteria were approved by the order No. 203n of the Ministry of Health of Russia dated May 10, 2017. These criteria were formed before the current clinical guidelines were developed and approved. Until now, there is no unified methodology for development of criteria for assessing the quality of medical care.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the healthcare quality criteria in clinical guidelines and the order No. 203n of the Ministry of Health dated May 10, 2017 for certain diseases/groups of diseases and prepare the proposals aimed at unifying the methodology for their formation.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We analyzed the number and content of criteria included in 14 clinical guidelines for some the most common diseases in oncology, cardiology, pulmonology and nephrology. We also compared these criteria with those reported in the order No. 203n of the Ministry of Health dated May 10, 2017. Considering these data, the expert group (11 experts) proposed some ideas how to choose and formulate the quality criteria in the process of clinical guidelines development.

RESULTS

We found quantitative and qualitative differences in approaches to choosing and formulating quality criteria in different clinical guidelines. Moreover, discrepancy between the criteria in the clinical guidelines and the order No. 203n of the Ministry of Health dated May 10, 2017 was observed. The number of criteria in different clinical guidelines varies from 7 to 38. Significant number of criteria are devoted to diagnostic, while rehabilitation and prevention are not covered at all. Multiple criteria contain no indication on specific interventions and time of these interventions that complicates their application in healthcare quality assessment in practice. Different criteria are based on different levels of evidencewhile evidence level and class of recommendations are not indicated everywhere. These differences determine the need to create a unified methodology for creating quality criteria in the process of guidelines development. The expert group proposed a number of recommendations on healthcare quality criteria development process.

CONCLUSION

The proposed recommendations can underlie methodological materials on formation of healthcare quality criteria in the framework of clinical guidelines development process.