Quality of health care measurement: a research priority

The research issues in the assessment of quality of health care have not changed significantly during the past 20 years. What was changed is the increased interest among providers, consumers, and policymakers for ways to measure and compare quality among providers. Clearly there is an increased sense of urgency in the need for research in such areas as the development of improved measures of physiologic status, physiologic reserve, studies of all health care providers, studies of various subpopulations, more use of existing population and sample survey data bases through linkages, and implementation of uniform clinical reporting.