The components of hospital quality: a nursing perspective

The first stage of a larger investigation intended to define objective and standardized measures of the quality of care provided by hospitals included the conduct of focus groups with registered nurses, eliciting their opinions as to the merit of a number of potential indicators of hospital quality. The registered nurses in the focus groups settled on the ratio of registered nurses to beds, the percentage of board-certified physicians, the presence of discharge planning services, service mix, the number of technological services, and Council on Teaching Hospitals membership as the best indicators of high-quality care delivery.