Quality of health Care

Abstract

WHO policy “Health for all” defines ten global goals and one of them is relating to health care quality: “Improvement of comprehensive high quality health care”. There are numerous definitions of health care and WHO defines it as “the level where delivered health care achieves the best results establishing the balance between the risk and benefit within specified economic conditions”. Basic dimensions of quality are equality, relevance, accessibility, acceptability, effectiveness and efficiency. Motives for establishing the system of quality in health care are professional, socio-economical, patients’ satisfaction, and the final and the most important at the same time – improvement of population health. Modern concept of quality means implementation of TQM (Total Quality Management) and CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) that represent managing strategies whose main steps are managing consciousness, strategic planning, management implementation and training of employees. Principles are that patients’ needs, opinions and experience are the important information in permanent improvement of quality, that it has to be integrated part of everyday work, that all employees in the system of health care have professional responsibility according to permanent improvement of quality and particular responsibility have managers at all levels in health institution, that permanent improvement of quality means positive approach to work and that all activities should be based on data and information not on assumptions. Significant parameter of quality is also patients’ satisfaction, which is defined by WHO as “the level when the health system has satisfied patients’ expectations”. One of the approaches in management and explicit measuring of quality is also accreditation and its purpose is improvement of quality, gaining of information and responsibility.