Using Clinical Practice Guidelines to Evaluate Quality of Care. Volume 2. Methods

摘要

As the United States undergoes a restructuring of the health care is financed anddelivered and debates the roles of the Government and the private sector in health care, there is growing interest in examining issues surrounding quality of care-how it is defined, how it is evaluated, and how delivery of care is related to patient outcomes. A panel of experts with a broad range of expertise and experience in measuring quality of care was convened to develop a document that would provide a single methodology for using clinical practice guidelines to evaluate the quality of health care. Volumes 1 and 2 of this document describe how to translate clinical practice guidelines into evaluation tools and how to use these tools to determine whether the care provided conforms to the recommended guidelines. A fundamental assumption of this document is that such a methodology could have broad utility for a variety of potential users, including practitioners, providers, and professional organizations.