Quality Assurance Of Health Services

Avedis Donabedian's name is synonymous with quality of medical care. He unraveled the mystery behind the concept by defining it in clear operational terms and provided detailed blueprints for both its measurement(known as quality assessment) and its improvement(known as quality assurance). Many before him claimed that quality couldn't be defined in concrete objective terms. He demonstrated that quality is an attribte of a system which he called structure, a set of organized activities whihc he called process, and an outcome which results from both. In this book Donabedian tells the full story of quality assessment and assurance in simple, clear terms. He defines the meaning of quality, explicates its components, and provides clear and systematic guides to its assessment and enhancement. His style is lucid, succinct, systematic and yet personal, almost conversational.

Quality of life is difficult to define and even more difficult to measure; as such, outcomes from nursing in continuing care are not easily articulated. Quality Assurance in Healthcare Service Delivery, Nursing and Personalized Medicine: Technologies and Processes offers a framework for measuring quality of service in the healthcare industry as it pertains to nursing, with insight into how new technologies and the design of personalized medicine have improved quality of care and quality of life. Assessment and feedback are a vital part of developing and designing personalized medicine, and this book details case studies and the latest research in the field of healthcare service delivery assessment. In addition to describing assessment methodology, the book is also a compendium of the latest research into new medical technologies.

Health care for the elderly American is among our nation's more pressing social issues. Our society wishes to ensure quality health care for all older people, but there is growing concern about our ability to maintain and improve quality in the face of efforts to contain health care costs. Medicare: A Strategy for Quality Assurance answers the U.S. Congress' call for the Institute of Medicine to design a strategic plan for assessing and assuring the quality of medical care for the elderly. This book presents a proposed strategic plan for improving quality assurance in the Medicare program, along with steps and timetables for implementing the plan by the year 2000 and the 10 recommendations for action by Congress. The book explores quality of careâ€"how it is defined, measured, and improvedâ€"and reviews different types of quality problems. Major issues that affect approaches to assessing and assuring quality are examined. Medicare: A Strategy for Quality Assurance will be immediately useful to a wide audience, including policymakers, health administrators, individual providers, specialists in issues of the older American, researchers, educators, and students.

This report presents a policy- and methodology-oriented discussion of factors involved in developing and analyzing quality assurance in European health care. Data are taken from research literature and interviews with representatives of national health authorities, professional organizations, and research and educational institutions. The first chapter of this report discusses a suggested conceptual framework, for a program of health care quality assurance, derived from evaluative research and industrial quality control. The second, third, and fourth chapters deal with three major variables in the framework: environment, conceptualization, and methodology. Examples of different approaches to quality assurance are given, and sources of information and measurement instruments and criteria are examined. The fifth chapter presents conclusions concerning the trends and state of quality assurance in health care. A bibliography of 179 items is appended. (FG)

This new comprehensive resource Medical Quality Management: Theory and Practice addresses the needs of physicians, medical students, and other health care professionals for up to date information about medical quality management. In reviewing the key principles and methods that comprise the current state of medical quality management in U.S. health care, this text provides a concise summary of quality improvement, patient safety and quality measurement methodologies. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

This document has the background papers from the 1992 AHCPR conference held to formulate a research agenda for quality assurance and improvement. Contents: Executive summary A perspective on quality assurance research Quality improvement / quality assurance taxonomy: a framework Organisational issues and perspectives on quality assurance Quality assurance and quality improvement in the information age Using information in quality improvement and quality assurance What is quality improvement? a report from the field Quality improvement: a patient's perspective Closing quality improvement/assurance information gaps: AHCPR's role Closing quality improvement/assurance information gaps: public and private sector roles Workshop recommendations Appendices.

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.