Abstract
In a humorous, satirical editorial, Dr. Joseph Alpert depicts Socrates conversing with Asculepo, a young medical student, regarding the elements of high-quality medicine. In their discussion, Asculepo states that he is confused about the elements of high-quality medicine that his professors called quality “metrics.” Socrates responds that it is “quite strange” that they want to teach you to practice high-quality medicine, but they evidently cannot agree on how to measure this thing called “quality.” During the past two decades, quality measures have evolved to play a crucial role in healthcare delivery; but in many ways, we are still not clear about what they should consist of.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alpert JS. Socrates on quality. Am J Med. 2018;131(8):855–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2018.03.022.
Ayanian JZ, Markel H. Donabedian’s lasting framework for health care quality. N Engl J Med. 2016;375(3):205–7. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1605101.
Consumer Reports. How we rate hospitals. 2018 June. Retrieved from http://article.images.consumerreports.org/prod/content/dam/cro/news_articles/health/PDFs/Hospital_Ratings_Technical_Report.pdf.
Donabedian A. Evaluating the quality of medical care. Milbank Q. 1966;83(4):691–729. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0009.2005.00397.x.
Esposito ML, Selker HP, Salem DN. Quantity over quality: how the rise in quality measures is not producing quality results. J Gen Intern Med. 2015;30(8):1204–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3278-6.
Frakt AB, Jha AK. Face the facts: we need to change the way we do pay for performance changing how we do pay for performance. Ann Intern Med. 2018;168(4):291–2. https://doi.org/10.7326/M17-3005.
Grady D, Redberg RF, O’Malley PG. Quality improvement for quality improvement studies quality improvement for quality improvement studies editorial. JAMA Intern Med. 2018;178(2):187. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.6875.
Hwang SW, Salem D, Thaler D, Heilman CB. A review of stroke DRG mortality rate as a quality of care measure. AAANS Bulletin. 2007;16(2):28–31.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salem, D.N., Kher, S., Charles, D., Freund, K.M. (2020). The History of Quality Metrics. In: Salem, D. (eds) Quality Measures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37145-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37145-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-37144-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-37145-6
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)