Decision criteria for selecting essential medicines and their connection to guidelines: an interpretive descriptive qualitative interview study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines has led to at least 137 national lists. Essential medicines should be grounded in evidence-based guideline recommendations and explicit decision criteria. Essential medicines should be available, accessible, affordable, and the supporting evidence should be accompanied by a rating of the certainty one can place in it. Our objectives were to identify …