Criteria and instruments of appropriateness in primary care

Abstract

The World Health Organization describes three particular features to assess the appropriateness of most medical services provided by clinicians during typical primary care visits: equity, efficacy and effectiveness. But many others aspects are involved and primary care physicians provide a wide range of services, most of which have not been studied sufficiently to develop explicit criteria for appropriateness. This articles describes meaning and characteristics of appropriateness in primary care and underlines the most important difficulties met by general practitioners, from the so called “disease mongering” to the application of the results of trials into the real clinical practice.