International Journal of Health Policy and Management

International Journal of Health Policy and Management

Evaluation of Quality Indicators in Oncology: New Perspectives; Comment on “Comprehensive Evaluation of Quality Indicators: Analyzing the Dutch Breast Cancer Audit”

Document Type : Commentary

Author
Shweta Baral
Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal
10.34172/ijhpm.10148
Abstract
Quality indicators (QIs) measurement aids to assess hospital performance and benchmarking between institutes of a country, which ultimately forms the basis of the quality improvement process. This commentary discusses the study by Verheul et al, which assessed 18 breast cancer QIs from the NABON Breast Cancer Audit (NBCA) using a structured framework evaluating feasibility, discriminative ability, validity, and reliability. Most of the evaluation criteria were fulfilled, except for reliability which was the most important issue raised by the author in the study. The weak reliability of the QIs indicated the importance of statistical evaluation in the development of such clinical QIs.

Keywords
Quality of Care
Reporting Quality Indicators
Reliability
Oncology
LMICs
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International Journal of Health Policy and Management
Volume 15, Issue 1
2026
Pages 1-3

  • Received Date 08 July 2026
  • Revised Date 18 September 2026
  • Accepted Date 21 September 2026
  • First Published Date 07 October 2026
  • Published Date 01 December 2026