What is quality and how much does it really matter?

Perhaps no single word has appeared more often in health care literature during the last 12 months than "quality." Designing and marketing high quality health care services is likely to be a strategic issue through the 1990s. The purpose of this commentary is to describe why the adoption of a three-component definition of quality may be useful for designing strategies for continual quality improvements, as well as to suggest the principal ways quality should be assessed. Answers to the question, "How much does quality really matter?" are examined. The commentary is based on the keynote address presented at the 1991 Health Care Consumer Buying Guides Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, sponsored by the Academy for Health Services Marketing.