Assessing medical care on the basis of its value

As the health care industry moves rapidly toward the 1990s, the previously single-minded effort for cost containment has yielded to a loftier goal: ensuring quality of care. But quality of care in the 1990s will be assessed quite differently from that in the bygone era of essentially unrestrained technology and proliferation and consumption of medical resources. In the 1990s, more care will seldom, if ever, be regarded as better care. Assessing quality of care will require an answer to the question: "Has the provider achieved the best possible clinical outcome for the least cost to the patient and the system, as a whole?" In other words: "Has the provider been able to demonstrate that it has optimized the value of its services?".