Bridging the Gap in Healthcare Quality -- The New Healthcare System of the 21st Century

Author: Commission on Health Care Quality, U.S. (eds.), translated by Wang Xiaobo and Ma Jinchang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Bridging the Quality Chasm is the second book in the series on U.S. healthcare by the Institute of Medicine. In the previously published To Err Is Human—Creating a Safer Health System (National Academies Press, 2000), the Institute of Medicine revealed the fact that a large number of patients die or are harmed each year due to medical errors—with as many as 98,000 deaths in hospitals annually. These reports raised serious questions about the quality of U.S. healthcare. Bridging the Quality Chasm urgently calls for fundamental changes in healthcare quality that could help close the gap and save countless lives. The book advocates for a large-scale redesign of the U.S. healthcare system, providing multi-tiered principles for specific action-oriented directions for health policy planners, healthcare managers, clinicians, regulators, and others in the healthcare field. This comprehensive work includes:
A set of realistic expectations for the 21st-century healthcare system.
Ten new rules for the relationship between patients and doctors.
A recommended organizational structure that better aligns incentives inherent in payment with quality improvement.
Key measures to promote evidence-based medicine and strengthen clinical information systems.
Analyzing the healthcare system as a complex system.
Bridging the Quality Chasm also provides substantial documentation on the causes of the quality chasm in healthcare and argues that current practices hinder quality, while exploring how systems-based approaches can be applied to drive healthcare transformation. The book acknowledges that there are many highly skilled professionals working in today’s healthcare system and that we must carefully examine these systems to find ways to make them safer and improve quality. Bridging the Quality Chasm is a clear prescription for raising the level of U.S. healthcare. Additional topics covered in this book include: