Evaluating Healthcare Quality: Standards and Improvement

Quality Product Criteria

A quality product achieves its desired objective at the lowest possible cost.

Quality Healthcare Professionals

Quality healthcare professionals require suitable facilities, advanced technology, and adequate training.

Detecting Quality: Manager's View

Effectiveness is the most detectable quality characteristic for managers. It means achieving objectives efficiently, allowing resource allocation to other needs.

User Perspective on Quality Healthcare

Users value proper personal care, effective treatments, continuity, and efficiency.

Scientific-Technical Quality vs. User Efficiency

Scientific-technical quality is often overlooked by users, especially in public health systems where the cost-benefit relationship isn't direct.

Accreditations and Audits

Accreditations

Accreditations are voluntary external verification processes for healthcare institutions.

Audits

Audits are indirect external evaluation methods to review healthcare protocols and records.

Quality Audits Commission

Concept

These committees, composed of clinical experts and management, conduct internal audits to advise on quality improvement.

Improvement Teams vs. Quality Circles

Improvement teams involve managers and professionals analyzing center-wide problems. Quality circles are single-service members participating voluntarily in quality projects.

Evolutionary Cycle Steps

Identifying problems or opportunities for improvement, preparing criteria, designing studies, analyzing data, discussing interventions, implementing corrective measures, and reevaluating results.

Defining Evolutionary Cycle Steps

• Planning: Establish working groups, collect data, analyze causes, propose solutions.
• Development: Implement solutions.
• Check: Verify results.
• Act: Standardize improvements.

Summarizing Evaluative Cycle Steps

PDCA: Planning, Development, Check, Act.

Techniques for Identifying Problems and Improving Care

Brainstorming, Nominal group, Flowchart, Polls and surveys, Grill prioritization technique, Pareto diagram, Cause-effect (Ishikawa) diagram, Correlation diagram, Histogram, Data collection sheet.