ManagementHealth Care ManagementQuality ManagementHealth Care Quality ManagementQuality AssuranceQuality ImprovementHealth Care QualityHealthcare Quality ManagementQuality Assurance In HealthcareQuality Assurance PrinciplesQuality MeasurementQuality Of CareHealth Care Quality MeasurementHealth Service Quality AssessmentHealthcare Quality AssessmentHealthcare Quality MeasurementPractice AdaptationQuality AssessmentQuality Of Care AssessmentQuality Of Care Evaluation
AT THE 1986 Annual Meeting, the House of Delegates adopted Council on Medical Service Report A on "quality of care." That report identified eight essential elements that characterize care of high quality and presented a series of nine "Guidelines" for the conduct of quality assessment, the process by which the quality of medical care delivered is monitored and measured. At the 1987 Annual Meeting, the Council's Report A described the operation of five specific quality assessment systems that are under way or planned and discussed how specific features of these systems illustrated the quality assessment guidelines in an operational way. A comprehensive program for managing the quality of care includes not only quality assessment but quality<i>assurance</i>activities, designed to assist practitioners in modifying practice behavior found to be deficient by quality assessment, to protect the public against incompetent practitioners, as well as to modify structural or resource deficiencies that