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Surveillance for Quality Assessment III. The Critical Assessment of Quality Indicators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

William B. Crede  and
Walter J. Hierholzer Jr.
William B. Crede*
Affiliation:
Departments of Quality Assurance, Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Hauen, Connecticut
Walter J. Hierholzer Jr.
Affiliation:
Hospital Epidemiology, Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Hauen, Connecticut
*
Quality Assurance, Dana Clinic Basement, Yale-New Haven Hospital, 20 York Street, New Haven, CT 06504
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Extract

The first two articles in this series reviewed the reasons for widespread acceptance of surveillence and control methods in hospital infection control programs, and discussed important factors contributing to the successes and failures in applying this approach to noninfectious nosocomial events. The quality assurance program ‘targets of surveillence” identified in these articles are referred to as “quality indicators” by other authors and have been defined as “a quantitative measure that can be used as a guide to monitor and evaluate the quality of important patient care and support service activities.” This article highlights those attributes of quality indicators that should be critiqued prior to implementation in a patient care review environment and discusses methods of improving quality indicator performance with ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

Type
Special Sections
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , April 1990 , pp. 197 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1990

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