Assessing the quality of prostate cancer care

Until recently, little was known about the quality of prostate cancer care in the United States. This article provides an overview of the methodology of quality of care research, reviews the available quality measures in prostate cancer and presents an overview of the existing literature on the quality of prostate cancer care in the US.

Researchers have applied methodologies developed in other conditions to construct tools to measure the quality of care in this disease. Initially, researchers from the RAND Corporation developed a preliminary performance measure set. This measure set was tested in a number of settings. Along with a number of clinical guidelines, the RAND measures served as the basis of new prostate cancer measures developed by the American Medical Association's Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement. Recent studies document that patients undergoing radical prostatectomy had worse documented compliance with quality indicators than those undergoing external beam radiotherapy.

There is clearly room for improvement in prostate cancer quality of care in the US. If providers do not take the initiative and address these shortcomings, providers and policymakers will implement changes that may not be in the best interests of patients.