[Quality of health care and costs]

The quality of health care is largely discussed issue among health care professionals in Finland. The purpose of this article is to point out some relations between the quality of nursing and the economical costs. The theme is mostly ignored in the published articles and books about quality of nursing and health care. In the previous studies of quality of nursing four main approaches have been introduced 1) practical approach, 2) professionalism, 3) client orientation and 4) research orientation. An important weakness in the approaches is that they are carried out from a point of view of a single profession at the time. Really multiprofessional projects are the exception. Additionally, economic costs have not been included in nursing quality concept or evaluation criterion. The need for quality in any health services is urgent, including nursing. That is because of decreasing resources and changing market oriented steering mechanisms in the Finnish health care system. In this situation the quality of nursing may arise as one important competition factor in the organizations and the units. The costs of poor quality of nursing are not well recognized among professionals. Collaboration between different professionals is a key issue to solve these kind of problems. We need more research about the relations between economic factors and quality of nursing and other health services.