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Health Care Quality Analysis

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The evaluation of quality in healthcare has a long history. The beginnings of monitoring healthcare quality can be traced back to a surgeon, E. A. Codman from Massachusetts General Hospital in the early twentieth century who advocated for systemic performance assessments of the care he provided to his own patients (Kongstvedt, 2013). The Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) and the application of computers in healthcare in the 1970 led to the large scale ability to analyze data (Kongstvedt, 2013). In the 1990s with increased efforts to control cost and increase quality there were many drivers to implement quality management programs including: a) state laws requiring quality assurance plans in HMOs, b) federal regulations requiring quality …show more content…
Quality assurance is an approach to assuring that a system or department is meeting a specific, defined standard (Carefoote, 1998). Quality assurance has typically been the domain of a few individuals focusing on specific problems. (Carefoote, 1998). The quality assurance process uses methods to monitor the process and correct problems if the process indicators fall below standards (Carefoote, 1998). Avedis Donabedian in the 1970s developed a process for evaluating the quality of healthcare based on three criteria: its structure, processes, and outcomes (Hughes, 2008). Structure measures the accessibility and quality of resources which are based on factors such as the credentialing of physicians, compliance with regulations, numbers of nurses with advanced training, and record keeping (Hughes, 2008; Kongstvedt, 2013). The structural measures are limited in that they are unable to distinguish between providers beyond whether they are meeting minimal standards (Kongstvedt, 2013). Process criteria involve the assessment of the delivery of healthcare services (Hughes, 2008). This criterion includes such evaluations as the uses of guidelines by providers for specific patient populations, quantity of referrals to out-of-network providers, number of healthcare preventative screenings, and follow up rates on abnormal diagnostic tests (Hughes, 2008; Kongstvedt, 2013). The final criterion, outcomes, includes infection rates, patient satisfaction, morbidity, and mortality (Hughes, 2008; Kongstvedt, 2013). Outcomes as a criterion are limited in that they often do not give information as to the causes (Kongstvedt,

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