Background Over the last century, the invitation to improve health-care service quality has
taken many different forms: questions, observations, methods, tools and actions have …

First published in 1999, this eclectic collection of papers examines quality management in
health care from a variety of standpoints. Managers, health care professionals and patients …

Quality is a term widely used not only within healthcare but throughout society, with
numerous references to the quality of care, commissioning, access to care, quality and …

It would seem that any discussion about almost any issue in recent times has had to have
the wordquality'peppered liberally throughout the exchange. This apparent obsession with a …

Finding the definition of quality has haunted mankind since the beginning of time. As far
back as ancient Egypt and classical Greece, descriptions of quality show man's struggle with …

Attempts a contribution to the area of health care quality by presenting a framework for
thinking about, and improving our understanding of, measuring quality in health care. To …

It is always easier to suggest reasons why something failed than succeeded. The frequently
expressed concerns about quality of health care make it a fitting topic for examination [1–3] …

" Quality" is the big issue which is currently fashionable in healthcare circles in several
industrialised countries. In the United Kingdom the government's White paper on the …

The previous chapter defined healthcare quality as the degree to which health services for
individuals and populations are effective, safe and people-centred. In doing so, it clarified …

Efforts to reform healthcare systems around the globe are proliferating rapidly. No country is
immune from the two fundamental pressures that are driving change: cost and access. Every …