Quality of care provided to outpatients with hepatic cirrhosis in a teaching hospital

Introduction: a set of indicators to measure the quality of care of cirrhotic patients has been established and previously published studies report an adherence rate to clinical guide indications of 40-80 %. Objective: to assess the adherence to quality indicators in a tertiary teaching hospital. Methods: a retrospective observational study was performed of all cirrhotic outpatients seen during one semester in 2017. The charts were studied of 324 patients and quality indicators related to five domains were collected. An overall adherence to 14 quality indicators was recorded and analyzed based on the attending physician's experience. Results: the results were excellent (more than 90 % adherence) for quality indicators related to prophylaxis of variceal bleeding and documentation of cirrhosis etiology, acceptable (60-90 % adherence) for hepatocellular carcinoma screening and disease severity assessment, and poor (less than 50 %) for vaccinations. Residents had significantly better results than experienced physicians in etiology, disease severity assessment and two indicators of prophylaxis of bleeding. Experienced physicians only presented a better adherence to hepatocellular carcinoma screening. Conclusions: despite excellent results for some quality indicators, most required improvement, especially vaccinations. The quality of care achieved by residents is equal to and even better than that of experienced physicians. Measuring quality of care is essential to analyze and improve the health care of cirrhotic outpatients and may be a useful tool for supervising specialists in training. Keywords: Liver cirrhosis. Quality of health care. Esophageal and gastric varices. Hepatocellular carcinoma. Internship. Residency.