A simultaneous analysis of nursing care quality and cost

The simultaneous evaluation of quality and the cost of health care can provide information that is useful for guiding quality improvement activities while minimizing or reducing cost. Despite the evidence of concern for health care costs, a long history of concern for health care quality, and numerous efforts to evaluate the quality and cost of health care simultaneously, current methods have been relatively ineffective in decreasing or containing costs. Simultaneous monitoring of cost and quality indicators can be used to compare differences between the cost of prevention and the cost of failure and can be utilized to determine areas where failure costs can be decreased.