Web-based comparative study of some national experiences of health care quality management

Abstract

Since the publication of study results on adverse events to health care in OECD countries, the importance of the national quality improvement strategies has been recognised. To examine how these strategies have been shaped in different jurisdictions, we carried out this study. We conducted a web-based comparative study of international practices. We first defined seven key health care and services quality management functions. We then drew on the experience of authors to make a reasoned selection of 13 countries or states across the world. We determined the distance that separates each of these functions from a country's Ministry of Health (MoH); and examined whether these functions are concentrated in a single organisation or dispersed across several organisations. Afterwards, we correlated our results with the quality level of these countries based on the OECD's health care indicators. Overall, Netherlands, Québec (Canada), Korea, Germany, England (UK), and the United States had at least 50% of their quality management functions controlled by self-regulated organisations. The Market Concentration Index ranged from 937 for the United States to 6800 for Russia. Graphical representation has shown us two health system models. Our results also clearly showed that countries had a better quality of care most often when they belong to model 1 of our taxonomy. These findings will help countries design and implement large-scale health care and services quality strategies for better and safer health care and services.