Improving the Quality of Care

Quality of care is making a comeback. After more than two decades of preoccupation with the costs of health care, more attention is being devoted to quality. But much of the attention is coming from unlikely sources — organizations more often associated with efforts to reduce costs. Employers are talking about the quality of health care.1,2 Managed-care companies and insurers talk about it.3,4 Data touted as measures of quality are increasingly appearing in newspaper and magazine articles.57 The Health Care Financing Administration and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) have called for a more . . .