An introduction to quality assurance in health care

Avedis Donabedian is widely recognized as the father of the field of quality assurance in health care. This short book, written in the last year of his life, is aimed at public health students and represents a distillation of his thought and experience over several decades. It deals with formal process of monitoring health care quality in an organization or system. After defining the components of health care quality such as efficacy, efficiency and acceptability, it describes the steps for monitoring and improving clinical performance in simple, clear terms.

Introduction, 1: The Components of Quality in Health Care, 2: Determining What to Monitor, 3: Determining Priorities in Monitoring, 4: Selecting Approaches to Assessing Performance, 5: Formulating Criteria and Standards, 6: Obtaining the Necessary Information, 7: Choosing When and How to Monitor, 8: Constructing a Monitoring System, 9: Bringing About Behaviour Change, 10: The Effectiveness of Quality Monitoring