What is Good Quality of Health Care?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.909Abstract
A diversity of definitions of quality exists, that frequently contain aspects of complexity, relativity and subjectivity. This paper provides an overview of key components in the quality debate within health care, including different perspectives and dimensions of the quality of care. Definitions of the quality of health care reflect the characteristics of health services, and are useful for measurements and quality improvement. Over time the patient perspective of quality has gotten increasing weight, and in quality improvement there has been a shift from individual responsibility for doctors and health care personnel to systems thinking. We argue that the quality approach in health care should be more standardized and that health care-specific definitions of quality should be used when the relationship between physician professionalism and quality is investigated.
Keywords: quality, health care, systems thinking, patient perspective, outcome, indicator, measurement, improvement.
Downloads
Metrics
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Cited by
