This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (55)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

David Blumenthal, MD, MPP

JAMA. 1993;269(21):2775-2778.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

INCREASING concerns about the quality of health care have led to experimentation with and deployment of many new technologies designed to monitor, compare, and improve the clinical performance of health care providers.¹ Among the newest and most controversial of these approaches is industrial quality management science (IQMS), also known as continuous quality improvement (CQI), the quality improvement process (QIP), and total quality management (TQM).^2-4

Evidence of the rapid spread of IQMS as an approach to managing quality in health care institutions is plentiful. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has adopted IQMS as an important standard in its reviews of health care institutions.⁵ Based on a recent national survey, Hospitals magazine estimates that 3100 US hospitals with more than 50 beds now have programs in TQM.⁶ An increasing anecdotal literature describes the success of IQMS in analyzing, ameliorating, or solving particular health care problems. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Health Policy Research and Development Unit and the General Internal Medicine Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Department of Medicine and Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to the Health Policy Research and Development Unit and the General Internal Medicine Unit, MPEC, Massachusetts General Hospital, 50 Staniford St, Boston, MA 02114 (Dr Blumenthal).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?