Application of case classification in healthcare quality assessment in China

The purpose of this study was to build a healthcare quality assessment system with disease category as the basic unit of assessment based on the principles of case classification, and to assess the quality of care in a large hospital in Shanghai. Using the Delphi method, four quality indicators were selected. The data of 124,125 patients discharged from a large general hospital in Shanghai, from October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2007, were used to establish quality indicators estimates for each disease. The data of 51,760 discharged patients from October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008 were used as the testing sample, and the standard scores of each quality indicator for each clinical department were calculated. Then the total score of various clinical departments in the hospital was calculated based on the differences between the practical scores and the standard. Based on quality assessment scores, we found that the quality of healthcare in departments of thyroid and mammary gland surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, stomatology, dermatology, and paediatrics was better than in other departments. Implementation of the case classification for healthcare quality assessment permitted the comparison of quality among different healthcare departments.