The contribution of case study research to knowledge of how to improve quality of care

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Efforts to improve the implementation of effective practice and to speed up improvements in quality and patient safety continue to pose challenges for researchers and policy makers. Organisational research, and, in particular, case studies of quality improvement, offer methods to improve understanding of the role of organisational and microsystem contexts for improving care and the development of theories which might guide improvement strategies. METHODS: This paper reviews examples of such research and details the methodological issues in constructing and analysing case studies. Case study research typically collects a wide array of data from interviews, documents and other sources. CONCLUSION: Advances in methods for coding and analysing these data are improving the quality of reports from these studies.