Tuberculosis Care Quality Assessment: Evaluating Diagnosis and Treatment Effectiveness in Korea, 2018 to 2022.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) care quality assessment has been implemented in the Republic of Korea since 2018. This paper evaluates the results of six rounds of the quality assessment from 2018 to 2023, focusing on the sixth quality assessment in 2023.

Methods: This study used cross-linked databases from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The study population included newly diagnosed TB patients reported between January and June each year from 2016 to 2023. The sixth quality assessment employed five indicators, which included the treatment success rate. Trends were analyzed using linear regression, and statistical comparisons were performed using chi-square tests.

Results: The sixth quality assessment demonstrated statistically significant improvements across all indicators. Since the fifth assessment, over 95% of patients diagnosed with respiratory TB have undergone TB confirmation tests. Both phenotype and molecular drug susceptibility test coverages showed significant upward trends since the third and fourth assessments, respectively. The treatment success rate, introduced for the first time in the sixth assessment, was reported at 78.3%. Non-TB-related deaths (10.3%) were the most common outcome, other than treatment success.

Conclusion: The TB care quality assessment has contributed to standardizing TB care in Korea and improving management indicators. Further efforts are needed to enhance treatment success through refining the evaluation criteria and implementing innovative management strategies.