Quality of US Outpatient Care

Abstract
Quality of health care is prominent on the nation’s health policy agenda and in the current health care debate.Quality can be evaluated at 3 distinct yet interrelated levels: structure, process, and outcomes.1 It is the Institute of Medicine’s view that a balanced national measure set should avoid structural measures because they have failed to consistently reflect the quality of care and desired outcomes.2 Multiple technical and practical difficulties exist in assessing all but the most common outcomes. As a result, quality is most often measured in the form of process indicators.3