Definition
Health Care Quality has been defined by the American Institute of Medicine as “the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” (Lohr 1990). Donabedian proposed thirty years before to define quality in health care as three-fold: quality of health care structure, process‐quality and quality of outcome (Donabedian 1966). The quality of the structure of health care relates to adequacy of the facilities, personnel, and policies to deliver medical care. Process quality is concerned about the appropriateness of diagnostic or therapeutic interventions. Outcome quality means the effectiveness and efficiency, i. e. the health status that people experience as well as the economic dimension of the health care provided.
Despite all efforts, the proposed definitions of health care quality remain rather vague and suggest that a definition of health care...
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References
Donabedian A (1966) Evaluating the quality of medical care, Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 44, pp. 166–206
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Böcking, W., Trojanus, D. (2008). Health Care Quality . In: Kirch, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Public Health. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5614-7_1387
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5614-7_1387
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