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Quality in the provision of headache care. 2: defining quality and its indicators
The Journal of Headache and Pain,
Peters M et al. – The indicators are currently being tested for feasibility of use in clinical settings.
Methods- Authors conducted a series of focus–group consultations with key stakeholders (doctors, nurses and patients) in headache care.
- From the findings they proposed a large number of putative quality indicators, and refined these and reduced their number in consultations with larger international groups of stakeholder representatives.
- They formulated a definition of quality from the quality indicators.
- Five main themes were identified: (1) headache services; (2) health professionals; (3) patients; (4) financial resources; (5) political agenda and legislation.
- An initial list of 160 putative quality indicators in 14 domains was reduced to 30 indicators in 9 domains.
- These gave rise to the following multidimensional definition of quality of headache care: “Good–quality headache care achieves accurate diagnosis and individualized management, has appropriate referral pathways, educates patients about their headaches and their management, is convenient and comfortable, satisfies patients, is efficient and equitable, assesses outcomes and is safe.”
- Quality in headache care is multidimensional and resides in nine essential domains that are of equal importance.