Data Sources for Health Care Quality Evaluation

Abstract

The central purpose of this article is to review the major approaches to evaluation of health care quality in terms of its use of different data sources. The areas of application, advantages, and disadvantages of seven data sources are presented, including direct observation, clinical records, record abstracts, clinical and administrative staff survey, patient survey, significant others survey, and population survey. Then the selection of data sources is discussed as this process is influenced by the answers to seven critical questions concerning the context of the quality assurance effort.

Evaluation of a Quality Assessment Manual

“…Examining clinical records is one of the most common forms of quality assessment (Baker, 1983). A review of the employee health record was conducted in the categories of employee injury and employee acute illness to evaluate the effectiveness of the quality assessment manual, not to evaluate the nurse in the health unit.…”

“…The manual is divided into two main sections: Each program service category has structure criteria and process criteria. Structure criteria focus on the setting in which care takes place (Swansburg, 1990), whereas process criteria reflect what the nurse does to and for the client (Baker, 1983;Horn, 1976). Although outcome criteria were not specifically examined in this evaluation, these criteria focus on the end result, or the change that takes place (AAOHN, 1987;Donabedian, 1988).…”