Improving Health Care Quality

Quality improvement literature usually conceptualises two principal dimensions of quality, technical and service. Technical quality is what the customers receive relative to what is known to be effective and largely reflects issues related to the health care providers. Service quality is how the customers receive the services and reflects the way and the environment in which health services are provided. This book proposes and tests a third principal dimension, Customer Quality, which is the characteristics that customers need for effective involvement in health care processes, decision making and action to improve the quality of care delivered and received. This 3-dimension model (CQMH) is applied in the context of care for people with Type 2 diabetes as an example of the high priority common chronic diseases and one of the most important public health problems worldwide. The book also examines the feasibility of using patient reports of received care as a way of measuring service and technical quality on a population basis.