Quality in health care : QHC最新文献

Background: In order that patient satisfaction may be assessed in a meaningful way, measures that are valid and reliable are required. This study was undertaken to assess the construct validity and internal reliability of the previously developed Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ).

Method: A total of 1390 patients from five practices in the North of England, the Midlands, and Scotland completed the questionnaire. Responses were checked for construct validity (including confirmatory factor analysis to check the factor structure of the scale) and internal reliability.

Results: Confirmatory factor analysis showed that items loaded on the appropriate factors in a five factor model (doctors, nurses, access, appointments, and facilities). Scores on the specific subscales showed highly significant positive correlations with general satisfaction subscale scores suggesting construct validity. Also, the prediction (derived from past research) that older people would be more satisfied with the service was borne out by the results (F (4, 1312) = 57.10; p < 0.0001), providing further construct validation. The five specific subscales (doctors, nurses, access, appointments, and facilities), the general satisfaction subscale, and the questionnaire as a whole were found to have high internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.74-0.95).

Conclusion: The results suggest that the PSQ is a valid and internally reliable tool for assessing patient satisfaction with general practitioner services.

Background: Reporting systems in anaesthesia have generally focused on critical events (including death) to trigger investigations of latent and active errors. The decrease in the rate of these critical events calls for a broader definition of significant anaesthetic events, such as hypotension and bradycardia, to monitor anaesthetic care. The association between merely undesirable events and critical events has not been established and needs to be investigated by voluntary reporting systems.

Objectives: To establish whether undesirable anaesthetic events are correlated with critical events in anaesthetic voluntary reporting systems.

Methods: As part of a quality improvement project, a systematic reporting system was implemented for monitoring 32 events during elective surgery in our hospital in 1996. The events were classified according to severity (critical/undesirable) and nature (process/outcome) and control charts and logistic regression were used to analyse the data.

Results: During a period of 30 months 22% of the 6439 procedures were associated with anaesthetic events, 15% of which were critical and 31% process related. A strong association was found between critical outcome events and critical process events (OR 11.5 (95% confidence interval (CI) 4.4 to 27.8)), undesirable outcome events (OR 4.8 (95% CI 2.0 to 11.8)), and undesirable process events (OR 4.8 (95% CI 1.3 to 13.4)). For other classes of events, risk factors were related to the course of anaesthesia (duration, occurrence of other events) and included factors determined during the pre-anaesthetic visit (risk of haemorrhage, difficult intubation or allergic reaction).

Conclusion: Undesirable events are associated with more severe events and with pre-anaesthetic risk factors. The way in which information on significant events can be used is discussed, including better use of preoperative information, reduction in the collection of redundant information, and more structured reporting.

Background: Iatrogenic injuries are relatively common and a potentially avoidable source of morbidity. The economic evaluation of this area has been limited by the lack of good quality national data to provide an estimate of incidence, associated disability, and preventability of iatrogenic injuries. Two recent surveys, the Quality in Australian Health Care Study (QAHCS) and the Utah Colorado Study (UTCOS), have now made this feasible.

Aims: To determine the direct costs associated with iatrogenic injuries occurring in a hospital setting.

Methods: The QAHCS was used as a representative national source of information on the incidence, disability, and preventability of iatrogenic injuries. Costs were calculated using information from Australian disease related groups (AN-DRGs) relative to the injury categories.

Results: The cost of just 12 preventable iatrogenic injuries is significant (0.25 million US dollars) and accounts for 2-3% of the annual budget of a typical Australian community based hospital of 120 beds. Costing data provide additional useful information for policy and decision makers.

Conclusion: Costing iatrogenic injuries is an important component of the impact of these events. An ongoing national database of iatrogenic injuries is necessary to assist in identifying the incidence of these injuries, monitoring trends, and providing data for cost estimates and economic evaluations.

The quality of patient care is dependent upon the quality of the multitude of decisions that are made daily in clinical practice. Increasingly, modern health care is seeking to pursue better decisions (including an emphasis on evidence-based practice) and to engage patients more in decisions on their care. However, many treatment decisions are made in the face of clinical uncertainty and may be critically dependent upon patient preferences. This has led to attempts to develop decision support tools that enable patients and clinicians to make better decisions. One approach that may be of value is decision analysis, which seeks to create a rational framework for evaluating complex medical decisions and to provide a systematic way of integrating potential outcomes with probabilistic information such as that generated by randomised controlled trials of interventions. This paper describes decision analysis and discusses the potential of this approach with reference to the clinical decision as to whether to treat patients in atrial fibrillation with warfarin to reduce their risk of stroke.