QUASER

Quality and safety in European Union hospitals: A research-based guide for implmeenting best practice and a framework for assessing performance

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'This translational study aims to design and disseminate an evidence based guide for hospitals to implement quality and safety improvement programmes, and an evidence based framework for payers to assess and monitor the quality and safety of hospitals across the EU. These outputs will be based on empirical findings from research in five partner countries. However, in addition, the development of these outputs will be with a wider stakeholder group of other countries, through a parallel process of translational workshops involving both hospitals and payers from these countries. The proposed study will take place in five European countries: Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Portugal and Norway. These countries were chosen as they represent variation in the important aspects of healthcare that we want to capture e.g. differences in the way that healthcare services are funded, and in the way that progress had been made in each country on the ‘quality journey’. By means of scoping reviews of published and grey literature, we will identify organisational and cultural characteristics which previous studies have linked to the effectiveness, safety and patient experience of hospital care and quantitative and qualitative indicators of the effectiveness, safety and patient experience of hospital care. Using results of this work, we will develop analytical tools and protocols to conduct in-depth, longitudinal case studies in a selected sample of 10 hospitals, two in each of the five partner countries. This will include building on previously published research to compare the macro-level (national) health care contexts of the five partner countries. We will then conduct a meso-level study of organisational characteristics and cultures and their relationship with available measures of the effectiveness, safety and patient experience of hospital care; and a micro-level longitudinal study of two clinical micro-systems in five of the 10 hospitals (one in each of the five partner countries). T'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Guiding hospitals to better themselves

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Europe generally boasts a relatively high level of medical facilities, but many hospitals across the continent can learn from the leaders in the field to improve standards. The EU-funded project QUASER rose up to this challenge.

Bringing together five partner countries with hospital managers, patients and other stakeholders, the project team studied cultural and organisational factors that impact hospital quality. It worked on preparing a guide to assess a hospital's quality improvement strategy.

To achieve its aims, the project outlined eight quality improvement strategies related to educational, cultural, political, emotional, physical, technological, leadership and external demands. It collected data for every EU country, choosing one developing and one high-performing hospital in each to conduct interviews and document observations.

QUASER focused on how the chosen hospitals dealt with quality improvement, looking at compliance, governance and accountability. It noted that many hospitals had more pressing financial concerns rather a quality improvement focus. On the other hand, it found that high-quality hospitals had integrated the concept of quality in their culture while considering cost reduction and staff motivation at the same time.

These observations and others were used to help develop the guides, supported by stakeholder workshops and collected data. The project team also considered how payer organisations can facilitate quality improvement in hospitals, an issue that was also incorporated in the guides.

Disseminated widely across Europe, these guides can be downloaded from the project's website and are set to encourage hospitals to better themselves. The benefits resulting from these recommendations to patients and staff could be significant.