Measuring the quality of haemophilia care across different settings: a set of performance indicators derived from demographics data

Abstract

Background: Haemophilia is a rare disease for which quality of care varies around the world. We propose data-driven indicators as surrogate measures for the provision of haemophilia care across countries and over time. Materials and methods: The guiding criteria for selection of possible indicators were ease of calculation and direct applicability to a wide range of countries with basic data collection capacities. General population epidemiological data and haemophilia A population data from the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) Annual Global Survey (AGS) for the years 2013 and 2010 in a sample of 10 countries were used for this pilot exercise. Results: Three indicators were identified: (i) the percentage difference between the observed and the expected haemophilia A incidence, which would be close to null when all of the people with haemophilia A (PWHA) theoretically expected in a country would be known and reported to the AGS; (ii) the percentage of the total number of PWHA with severe disease; and (iii) the ratio of adults to children among PWHA standardized to the ratio of adults to children for males in the general population, which would be close to one if the survival of PWHA is equal to that of the general population. Country-specific values have been calculated for the 10 countries. Conclusions: We have identified and evaluated three promising indicators of quality of care in haemophilia. Further evaluation on a wider set of data from the AGS will be needed to confirm their value and further explore their measurement properties.