Challenges of audit of care on clinical quality indicators for hypertension and type 2 diabetes across four European countries.

Background: The purpose of the study was to measure clinical quality by doing an audit of clinical records and to compare the performance based on clinical quality indicators (CQI) for hypertension and type 2 diabetes across seven European countries: Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania and Spain.

Methods: Two common chronic conditions in primary care (PC), hypertension and type 2 diabetes, were selected for audit. The assessment of CQI started with a literature review of different databases: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Health Organization, European Commission European Community Health Indicators, US National Library of Medicine.