An Introduction to Quality Assurance in Health Care

Avedis Donabedian

Dec 2002 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

Avedis Donabedian's name is synonymous with quality of medical care. He unraveled the mystery behind the concept by defining it in clear operational terms and provided detailed blueprints for both its measurement(known as quality assessment) and its improvement(known as quality assurance). Many before him claimed that quality couldn't be defined in concrete objective terms. He demonstrated that quality is an attribte of a system which he called structure, a set of organized activities whihc he called process, and an outcome which results from both. In this book Donabedian tells the full story of quality assessment and assurance in simple, clear terms. He defines the meaning of quality, explicates its components, and provides clear and systematic guides to its assessment and enhancement. His style is lucid, succinct, systematic and yet personal, almost conversational.

Ratings and reviews

I have seen and gone through this book and find few chapters are useful, if you are in healthcare field. The chapter 4: selecting approaches to assessing performance , need further development with the adnancement of knowledge on quality management in healthcare.need comperison with other approaches. Prof.Niloy Sarkar W.B., India.

This book very nicely describes the concept of Quality Assurance in Health. In the TQM context it is a difficult task to describe quality assurance in service sector such as health. This book is an effort to overcome the issue without touching the profit aspects. I recommend this book to all Public Health students doing health management course to go through this book.