Improving the quality of measurement and evaluation in quality improvement efforts.

摘要

Quality of health care in the United States falls short of the desired outcome. Efforts to measure, publicize, and reward clinicians and health care organizations for their quality of care have grown exponentially over the last decade. The underlying goal of these efforts is to increase the number of patients treated by high-quality health care providers. Two methods to achieve this goal have received widespread attention. First, convert low-quality providers to high quality; pay-for-performance and quality improvement (QI) efforts are strategies to accomplish this conversion. Second, move market share from low-quality to high-quality providers; public reporting of performance measures is a strategy to achieve this shift. Underpinning all of these efforts is the need for valid quality of care measures.