Quality Indicators for Renal Cancer Care: A Systematic Review.

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Health Services Research
• Quality Improvement

Background:

• Quality indicators (QIs) are essential for evaluating healthcare effectiveness, safety, and patient-centered outcomes.
• Defining and implementing QIs for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) presents unique challenges and unmet needs within the field.
• Existing QIs for RCC lack standardization in development, definition, and application across the care pathway.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and summarize available data on QIs for renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
• To characterize the development and application of QIs across the RCC care pathway.
• To identify areas for future development and consensus-building in RCC quality measurement.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of English-language studies from January 2000 to March 2025.
• Searches conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane databases.
• Quality assessment of identified QIs using the Appraisal of Indicators through Research and Evaluation (AIRE) instrument.

Main Results:

• 12 studies identified 12 sets of QIs, totaling 86 distinct indicators.
• Significant heterogeneity observed in QI development strategies, quality, and reporting.
• QIs covered various RCC care stages: diagnosis (33%), treatment (67%), and outcomes (83%), but lacked external validation and defined cutoff values.

Conclusions:

• A relative lack of evidence and substantial heterogeneity exist for RCC QIs.
• Further efforts are required to establish consensus on well-developed QIs for RCC.
• Validated QIs are needed to effectively define and assess the quality of RCC care and its impact on clinical outcomes.