Healthcare outcomes management and quality improvement

Until recently, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has relied on structure measures in drafting their annual Hospital Standards for Accreditation Manual. Peer Review Organizations (PROs), on the other hand, relied on process indicators in evaluating quality of care provided to Medicare patients. Currently, however, a new movement called 'outcomes management' is evolving to include a number of areas that impact on the quality of patient care. It focuses on using outcome measures to manage quality. This trend toward outcome management is driven by economics and, to a lesser extent, by the curiosity of providers and researchers. In this paper the concept of outcomes management is presented, along with the objectives, the methods for implementation, and its relationship to quality improvement.