Quality measures entail the apparatus that aid healthcare organizations to quantity or compute in figures the healthcare outcomes and processes and patient opinions. The figures are also instrumental in enabling organizations to enact proper structures and/or systems that can help to improve the quality of care based on the different quality objectives for health care.
The main objectives include effectiveness, safety, efficiency, patient focus, equity, and well-timed care. Nash et al. state that clinical quality measures were developed in the early 1900s. Ernest Codman was recognized as one of the earliest promoters of clinical outcomes measurement.
Quality measures have some specifications or basic elements, which mainly include the people being measured (age, gender), the aspect being measured (heart rate), and the time or calendar year. The foundational elements provide a basis for developing different clinical quality measures in medicine and for essentially any facet of healthcare.
According to Jaziel, clinical quality measures are fundamentally developed and validated by different organizations. These are the Centre for Medical Services (CMS), the National Quality Forum, and the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) under the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).
The organizations ensure the development and validation of clinical quality measures undergo a rigorous examination to guarantee that measures that come out meet the utmost evidence-based scientific criteria.
The clinical quality measures have been broadly categorized into three main classes: process, structure, and outcome. Process measures involve the stages contemplated in the actual delivery of healthcare: preventive care, diagnosis, and treatment.
Structure measures entail the facilities, tools, and other services offered and have an impact on the capacity to deliver better healthcare. Outcome measures are centered on the effects or results of the processes of healthcare. They are further sub-categorized into clinical outcomes, economic outcomes, and humanistic outcomes. Examples of each sub-category are humanistic (quality of life), clinical (mortality, morbidity), or economic (finances and their utilization).