Quality management and continual improvement of health care: A framework

Abstract

Quality management (QM) in its various forms has become increasingly prevalent in health care. Anyone who works in the health care field has heard about continuous quality improvement, practice guidelines or critical pathways, and outcomes. They have also heard about the promise that QM holds for improved patient care. Similarly, QM promises to benefit continuing medical education (CME) and vice versa. QM is designed to define health practice problems and CME to help remedy these problems. This article presents the framework within which QM and continual improvement work; CME professionals will need to understand this framework in order to benefit from the mutual potential of QM and CME.