Quality evaluation & improvement for ovarian cancer treatment in the Netherlands
The Dutch Gynecological Oncology Audit (DGOA) is a quality registry that measures quality of care through quality indicators. This study showed that some hospitals differed significantly from the national average on several quality indicators in the period between 2014-2019. For example; Patients with a severe complication after surgery for advanced stage ovarian cancer waited longer to (re)start chemotherapy. In addition, patients who underwent surgery for early stage ovarian cancer were not always operated according to the guideline. Finally, we examined whether a statistical adjustment was needed to make a fair comparison between hospital outcomes. At the moment this was not needed for the studied population as the correction had no effect on the measured outcome. With research from the DGOA, hospital variation was shown to be present for patients with ovarian cancer between 2014-2018. To improve quality of care in the future, these results will need to be discussed and followed up.
https://repository.ubn.ru.nl//bitstream/handle/2066/284849/284849.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/2066/284849