QUALITY IN TERMS OF DENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Providing quality medical and dental services has become a major task and priority of every health system. Dental medicine, as an integral part of primary and specialized medical care, in order to function properly requires clear and reliable indicators for assessing the dental care, which ensure that the dental services provided are timely, safe, effective and focused on the specific needs of the patient. In recent decades, there has been a significant increase in interest in measuring and assessing the quality of dental services and various research approaches have been used for this purpose. The most widely used quality assessment model is Donabedian’s invented in 1988, which categorizes the assessment indicators into three main groups: structure, process and outcome.Aim: The present study aims to present a systematic review of dental service quality indicators and to assess their applicability in clinical practice.Materials and methods: A systematic review of the scientific literature on the topic published in the period from 1980 to 2025 was conducted, including articles from the databases PubMed, Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Wiley. Keywords which were used for the purposes of scientific research are: “oral health care quality”, “quality of dental services”, “dental quality indicators”, “Donabedian´s model”. Only publications with validated indicators for assessing the quality of dental services were included in the scientific study.Results: The results of the scientific study show that the most frequently used indicators are from the process group, which reflects the desire for traceability and control over daily clinical dental activity. Outcome indicators, such as the indicator of patient satisfaction with the provided dental care and Oral Health- related Quality of Life (OHRQoL), are described in the scientific literature as being more difficult to measure. Digitalization in dentistry creates the need to create new indicators, such as Dental Data Synthetic Index (DDSI), which assesses the level of digital awareness and maturity of a dental practice, in the context of providing quality dental care.Conclusion: In the sense of global efforts to improve patients’ dental health and optimize resources, the definition and implementation of standardized indicators for the quality of dental services is key to evaluating and improving dental practice.