Abstract
Aims Clinical guidelines have made an impact on the quality of care but
recently their drawbacks became more visible. In this article standards
of care are introduced as a new and further step in de development of
clinical guidelines in the Netherlands Methods An historical overview of
guideline and care standard development and an example of the standard
for depressive disorders are presented Results Standards of care
describe in general terms from the perspective of the patient what good
care is for people with a certain mental disorder during the entire care
continuum, the patient journey. They describe for all parties in the
mental health care system what is necessary in the care process. Generic
standards describe healthcare components or healthcare topics that are
relevant to multiple mental disorders More than 40 standards of
care/generic standards have been developed. Conclusions Standards of
care seem to be a solution for the problem of different and sometimes
conflicting monodisciplinary guidelines, the limited scope of the
monodisciplinary guidelines and the omission of clinical expertise and
patients preferences in the clinical guidelines. However implementing
the new set of comprehensive standards of care will be a challenge.