Assessment of healthcare providers’ performance considering three healthcare quality indicators: A review article

Abstract

Context: In many healthcare systems, the quality of the healthcare delivered is monitored using a number of “indicators.” In the present review, we investigate studies that address issues with the care delivered by healthcare providers. To do this, we employ indicators of the quality of those healthcare services. Evidence Acquisition: The studies for the review were identified by searching a number of electronic databases, including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, Ovid (Medline), the Social Sciences Citation Index, SID (Scientific Information Database, or Persian database), and Iran Medex (Persian database). Of 8,850 studies published between January 1971 and May 2015, 53 met the study criteria and were reviewed. In this study, the following key words were searched, both alone and in combination: Health, healthcare, health care, provider*, effectiveness, quality, clinical outcome, patient satisfaction, and quality of life. We also considered healthcare quality indicators such as “clinical outcome,” “patient satisfaction,” and “quality of life” for our assessment of the quality of healthcare providers. Results: Of the 53 papers selected, 18 assessed the quality of care provided for cardiovascular disorders, 12 studied cancer conditions, eight dealt with metabolic disordersanddiabetes, six focusedonacute infection, three assessed orthopedicsandtrauma conditions, two studied pediatric conditions, two assessed obstetrics and gynecology conditions, one dealt with asthma and allergic disease conditions, and one assessed geriatric conditions. In our assessment of improvements in healthcare providers’ performance based on healthcare quality indicators, improvements in clinical outcomes ranged from 26.6% for cancer conditions to 98.8% for pediatric and gynecological conditions. An acceptable level of patient satisfaction was achieved in the range of 30.2% for cancer conditions to 96.0% for pediatric conditions, while improvements to quality of life ranged from 12.5% for cancer conditions to 88.7% for acute infection. Conclusions: Taking account of three indicators for assessing the quality of healthcare providers (clinical outcome, patient satisfaction, andquality of life), the highestimprovementlevelsamongproviderswereobserved for pediatricandgynecological conditions, and the lowest improvement levels were found for cancer conditions.