Formulating priorities for quality assurance activity. Description of a method and its application
J. W. Williamson
Quality assurance activity seems to have had little documented impact in
terms of improving patient health or reducing care costs. One reason may be
the lack of a practical and effective decision process for selecting
priority areas where improvement of health or any other target outcome will
most likely be achieved. This article describes a structured procedure for
meeting this need. In addition, results of 14 years of quality assurance
experience with structured and nonstructured topic selection procedures in
23 multispecialty group clinics and their associated hospitals are briefly
reviewed. On the basis of this experience it is suggested that this
priority method is both feasible and practical and can be recommended for
application to most quality assurance systems. It is especially suited for
planning medical care evaluation studies of the Professional Standards
Review Organizations or the performance evaluation projects of the Joint
Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals.
