Quality of equine veterinary care: Where can it go wrong? A conceptual framework for the quality of equine healthcare, based on court cases against equine practitioners in The Netherlands

摘要

Quality control and client satisfaction are topics of considerable current interest in both human and veterinary healthcare. Crucial to this discussion is a proper definition of 'quality of care'. This study applied, to (equine) veterinary care, a conceptual framework designed for assessing the quality of human healthcare and featuring structural deficiency, procedural inadequacy and disappointing outcome as key elements. This was done using court cases against equine practitioners as a yardstick forclient dissatisfaction. Applying a system for evaluating the quality of healthcare may be a good way of monitoring and improving (equine) veterinary services, particularly once reliable indices for client satisfaction have been validated.