Evaluating Quality of Care in the New Health Care Environment

Evaluates the quality of eye care assessment in the changing health care environment and describes the quality systems currently in use and under development at two major eye institutes (in Los Angeles and Baltimore). In the future, quality monitoring will require measuring and linking rate of conformance with indicators for each of three components of quality of care- structure, process, and outcome. This article views the development of continuous quality improvement systems is an important initiative that will help improve the value of eye care. Linking structure, process, and outcome variables may result in the ability to adjust payment schedules or levels of care to reflect these relationships.