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Quality Indicators of Drug Prescribing in Croatia

Quality of prescribing has become an important issue in assessing the quality of health care. The quality of drug prescribing has been measured through indicators which are defined as measurable elements of practice performance for which there is evidence or consensus that they can be used to asses quality. However, prescribing remains a controversial area of quality assessment with only a few validated quality indicators existing. There are considerable variations in prescribing standards in various countries, and indicators should be based on them. After defining what indicators are intended to measure and what conclusions can be made, they may help identify potential problems. For indicators to be useful for quality assessment, consistent and comprable data must be available across the relevant healthcare organisations. With this benchmarking approach, best practices could be found and implemented. In Croatia, several quality indicators have been in use to audit prescribing both in hospitals and primary care. Adherence to recommendations in prescribing nonsteroidal antinflammatory drugs and antimicrobials, using DU90% methodology, has been used as an indicator of prescribing appropriatenss. Recently we have been investigating the incidence of potential drug interactions when drugs are coprescribed. These indicators may provide a starting point for developing a common set of prescribing indicators.

antibiotics; quality; prescribing

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