Quality of care: Improving effectiveness, safety, and responsiveness
The Observatory Venice Summer School 2018 is a short, intensive course. It is a week of learning, interacting, studying, debating, and sharing experiences with other policy makers, planners and professionals to understand, discuss and improve quality-of-care strategies and policies.
When: 22-28 July 2018
Who: The course is aimed at senior and mid level policy makers, civil servants and professionals.
If you are involved in steering health care services or are looking at measuring, assuring or improving quality of care at international, national or regional level – then the Observatory Venice Summer School is for you.
Objectives: To
- Understand the underlying concept of ‘quality of care’ and its various dimensions as well as ways to measure and compare quality
- Provide evidence-based country experiences of different approaches and innovative models of assuring and improving care
- Systematize and interpret the effectiveness of quality of care approaches such as evidence-based pathways, accreditation, audit and feedback, patient safety measures, public reporting or pay-for-quality
- Review how such approaches can be combined into national strategies to enable that health systems fulfil their roles and continuously improve their performance
Why quality of care?
Most stakeholders and policy-makers believe they are working to improve the quality of care. However, when different stakeholders talk about quality they mean different things. What’s more, there are different strategies that may help to improve quality in a range of care settings – each with different challenges. Unsurprisingly, there is an ongoing and sometimes fierce debate about what quality means and how best to improve it. The Observatory Venice Summer School 2018 will help senior and mid-level policy makers, civil servants, health professionals and patient group representatives to explore concepts and strategies that will help them assure and improve quality of care from different perspectives on services as well as whole system level. The most important topics covered by the one-week intensive course include:
- What is ‘quality of care’? How do different organisations define quality? What are the different dimensions of quality?
- How can quality of care be measured? What indicators exist to track performance on different dimensions of quality? What data sources are available and/or needed?
- What are the key approaches to assure and improve quality of care? What are the characteristics of different approaches? What do we know about their (comparative) effectiveness? What are possible unintended consequences? When to use which strategy?
- What are future trends, key challenges, and policy options towards improving quality of care in different health systems?
- How can the most fitting components for a quality strategy in a given national context be identified and implemented?
Approach: The six day course includes formal teaching but has at its core the experiences of participants in practice. A highly participative approach emphasizes group work that cuts across themes, participant presentations, round tables and panel discussions. It mobilizes the latest evidence and a multidisciplinary team of experts with a track record in the analysis, implementation and evaluation of defining, measuring and improving quality of care. Course participants will also be able to share perspectives with and gain insights from key international organizations including the European Commission, OECD and WHO as well as relevant professional and governmental organizations and to engage in political dialogue with senior policy makers. They will be part of the Summer School tradition, which fosters evidence-based policy-making and encourages European health policy debate by raising key issues, sharing learning and building lasting networks.
The event has been granted 25 European CME credits (ECMEC®s) by the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME®).
MODULE A: Definitions and dimensions of quality
This module provides the basis for a common understanding of the concept ‘quality of care’ across international organizations, countries and areas of care by addressing questions such as:
- What is ‘quality of care’? A working definition
- What are the different dimensions of quality?
- Does our understanding of quality differ depending on the area of care and country?
MODULE B: Measuring quality
This module addresses the challenges that measuring the various dimensions of ‘quality of care’ poses as well as methodological approaches to deal with them on local, national and international level:
- Concepts and data sources at country level for international comparisons
- Measuring quality at provider and service level
- How to assure validity, reliability and actionability of quality indicators
- What data infrastructure is necessary?
MODULE C: Effectiveness of quality strategies
This module deals with the various approaches that claim to contribute to an improvement of quality. A number of approaches will be addressed in detail – each in relation to the following questions:
- What are the key approaches to assure and improve quality of care? What are their characteristics?
- What do we know about the (comparative) effectiveness of these approaches to improve quality of care? What are possible unintended consequences?
- What mix of strategies on clinical, service and system level works best?
MODULE D: Bringing it together and future trends
This module discusses the overall implications for countries and international organizations for their current and future policy-making:
- How can the various approaches be combined into a national quality strategy? Which factors contribute to successful implementation of such strategies?
- What are future trends, key challenges, and policy options towards improving quality of care in different health systems and at international level?
- How will ICT, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence shape quality improvement in health care?
Organization:
The Summer School is organized by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, the Veneto Region of Italy, the European Commission and World Health Organization (WHO),
with the special participation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Imperial College London.
Faculty:
The Summer School will involve a group of expert lecturers and facilitators from international organizations and centres of expertise and will be led by
- Reinhard Busse European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and Berlin University of Technology as Director
- Niek Klazinga OECD and Academic Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam as Co-Director
Preparation:
- The course involves only limited preparation
- All materials will be available in due course at www.theobservatorysummerschool.org.
Other information:
The Summer School involves
- An active social programme to facilitate networking and provide opportunities to enjoy the magnificent setting of Venice
The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies supports and promotes evidence-based health policy-making through the comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the dynamics of health care systems in Europe and beyond. It
is a partnership that includes national governments and other authorities (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the Veneto Region, the French Union of Health Insurance Funds), international organizations
(the WHO Regional Office for Europe, European Commission, and World Bank) and academia (London School of Economics and Political Science, and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine).
The Observatory has three hubs and Summer School is organized by its Berlin hub which is hosted by the Berlin University of Technology.
The European Commission is the EU’s executive body. It represents the interests of the European Union as a whole (not the interests of individual countries). The Commission is committed to make Europe a healthier, safer place, where citizens can be confident that their interests are protected. It has been a partner of the European Observatory since 2009 and is promoting and facilitating exchange of best practice, and the preparation of elements for periodic monitoring and evaluation.
The Veneto Region seeks to ensure that empirical evidence and analysis reaches national and regional stakeholders and policy-makers. It is involved in comparing health care systems across EU Member States. The Veneto Region is active in the area of cross-border health care and plays a leading role in the EU in research and policy development. The Veneto Region, which has been a partner of the European Observatory since 2004, is hosting the Summer School because it is committed to providing a European platform for political debate on health matters, linking regional authorities to the EU debate.
The World Health Organization, Division of Health Systems and Public Health aims to assist Member States to design, adopt and implement comprehensive health and health systems policies, strategies and tools in line with the values
of solidarity, equity and participation across the broad thematic areas of health systems governance, financing, services delivery and resource generation. The WHO EURO Office hosts the partnership of the Observatory. DSP and the Observatory work
in close collaboration in a range of knowledge brokering activities such as the development of policy briefs and dialogues to support decision making.
