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Quality of care

Quality of care

Quality of care is essential to achieve final health system goals such as health improvement, financial protection and health system responsiveness. The European Observatory has consistently focused on quality of care, either as an overall concept or on individual strategies aiming to assure or improve it.  

 

Quality of care is one of the most frequently quoted principles of health policy, and it is a priority on the policy agenda at different levels. The Sustainable Development Goals clearly underline the importance of high quality health services for achieving universal health coverage in a meaningful way: “[Achieve universal health coverage], including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.” (Goal 3, Target 8). While access to services is of vital importance, better health can only be achieved if the services accessed are also of high quality. 

The understanding of what “quality of care” encompasses varies. Health system performance is a term used to describe the degree to which health systems as a whole achieve their overall and intermediate goals. While health care quality can be understood as the degree to which health services for individuals and populations are effective, safe and people-centered. Population health outcomes and system responsiveness depend on the extent to which the entire population has access to care, and the extent to which health services are of good quality. 

Many different movements and initiatives aim to assure, or improve, the quality of health services. However, evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different quality strategies is not always readily available for policy-makers, who have to struggle with prioritizing initiatives for investment. To bridge this gap, the Observatory has consistently focused on quality of care, either as an overall concept or on individual strategies aiming to assure or improve it. 

Two pivotal studies (Legido-Quigley et l. 2008; Busse et al. 2018; see below) have dealt with how quality of care is defined, focusing on the European context. These studies explore how different strategies can be leveraged to improve quality of care, and what existing evidence suggests about their effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and implementation.  

In line with health policy priorities, the Observatory has worked on specific areas or individual strategies that contribute to quality of healthcare (see some examples below).

Health system performance topics

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