September 13, 2010
There is much concern about access to, and quality of, emergency department (ED) care in Canada, where every year more than 12 million ED visits are made. However, there is no common agreement as to what constitutes appropriate measures of quality of care in the ED. The evaluation of ED care in Canada is hampered by the absence of a common agreement on what constitutes appropriate measures of quality of ED care. This report presents a prioritized set of evidence-based quality of care indicators for EDs which was developed through a nationally representative and scientifically rigorous process.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Emergency service, Indicators, Quality control | No Comments
September 9, 2010
Questions have been raised about whether and how health care quality improvement (QI) initiatives ought to be reviewed to address possible ethical issues asso- ciated with them. These questions have focused primarily on whether some QI initiatives meet the regulatory criteria for human subject research and should therefore be regulated and reviewed as such. Based on surveys of health care system professionals conducting QI initiatives and hospital CEOs, this issue brief finds that QI initiatives are routinely reviewed by a variety of internal mechanisms prior to implementation, although rarely through an institutional review board or another independent body charged specifically with ethical oversight of QI initiatives. Further research, the authors say, is needed to achieve a bet- ter understanding of how review mechanisms for QI initiatives are structured, including information on who reviews these activities, how they are reviewed, and whether such processes include an ethical assessment of the proposed QI initiative (Faden, et al. 2010).
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Ethics, Quality control | No Comments
