Medical practice protocols. The experience of hospitals in Romania

Abstract

The standardization of medical practice is necessary to ensure effective and quality medical care, and for hospitals, the implementation of practice protocols sometimes becomes a rather laborious and resource consuming task, often impracticable due to missing links for the implementation of this goal.

The aim of the study was to analyze the diagnostic and treatment protocols for 20 of the most common pathologies treated at the level of some pilot hospitals in Romania.

RESULTS. The medical practice analyzed at the level of the pilot hospitals within the CAPESSCOST project is to a very small extent processed through well-structured practice protocols, which should contain relevant aspects and adapted to the specificities at the local level. Hospitals choose rather to take over information from national or international reference guidelines in their own protocols, without any adaptation.

CONCLUSIONS. In order to standardize the practice and to establish cost standards for the selected pathologies and not only, it is necessary a model (reference) of diagnosis and treatment protocol for the hospital, by types of hospitals, with a basic structure that has to be correctly and adequately completed by all development teams, according to a typical methodology, including clinical pathways and the level of consumed resources for each pathway. At the same time, a regulatory framework is needed to stimulate and promote the standardization of medical practice among the main actors in the hospital medical sector, a first recommendation in this regard referring to the inclusion of the elaboration and implementation practice of practice protocols as a mandatory tool for hospital management