Quality Assurance In Health Care

Achieving quality in a business, especially one related to healthcare, has become much more important in the last fifty years. There is a difference, however, between continuous quality assurance and continuous quality improvement. Dr. Jerry Goldstone, in his paper presented to the Society of Vascular Surgery in 1997, showed that quality assurance "can be defined as an effort to find and overcome problems with quality - that is, directing the performance and behaviors of practitioners and institutions toward more appropriate health outcomes, expenditures, or both."

Quality assurance has as its objective the achievement of an outcome based on a standard that defines acceptable levels of performance, derived from historical data, research, …show more content…
Patients are in an obviously vulnerable position, and they depend on the insurance that they have paid into for years to help them to recover from either a trauma, or disease, or to achieve and maintain optimum health with a chronic condition. If the health care that the patient receives is not the best available, it is not just a matter of getting a bad purchase or business service, this can jeopardize that patient's physical well being, perhaps even his or her life. Health care is very expensive in recent years, and properly so, since the research and development of new treatments and medicines is expensive. But if efforts can be made to provide the very best, not just meet the minimum standards, a facility should try to make them to the best of its ability within its budget. Sometimes going that extra mile takes empathy and compassion more than money or the newest gadget.

References: Baystate Health Awards and Rankings for Quality and Safety.(2012) Baystate Medical Center. Springfield MA http://baystatehealth.org/Baystate/qualityawards

Goldstone, Jerry. The Role of Quality Assurance versus Continuous Quality Improvement. (August 1998) Journal of Vascular Surgery Volume 28, Number 2. pg 378-380 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0741521498701806

Integration of Mental Health with Quality Assurance Policies. (2012) The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Washington, DC.

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