AIMS has taken a giant step in empowering the patients who use our hospitals and their families who are trying to ensure that their loved ones get the care that they need. This is the first paper in the Institute’s major new project that aims to create the best tool in Canada today for assessing the quality of care offered by the country’s major hospitals.
The paper, entitled A FINGER ON THE PULSE: Comparative Models for Reporting the Quality of Hospital Care takes on many of the myths that surround the idea of comparing the quality of care in our hospitals. According to author Julia Witt, “Consumers need to be able to compare the quality of different products and services if they are to make an informed choice. That is true whether it is the gas mileage of different models of cars or the quality of health care provided by different hospitals.”
Witt, AIMS Fellow in Pharmaceutical Policy, looked at the American, European, and Canadian experience with accreditation mechanisms and quality assessment systems in health care.
As Witt points out in this first paper of AIMS Hospital Report Card project, the information required to evaluate many aspects of health care delivery is lacking, yet evaluations can be made by making better use of all the information that is available.