Summary
Trinity of quality improvement
Studies on structure, process and outcome related to quality improvement in long-term care in the Netherlands between 2007 and 2011
Sjenny Winters
This article is about the mechanism of quality improvement in the longterm care for the elderly in the Netherlands. The central aim of this article is to ‘give insight in the influences of structure, process and outcome on quality improvement in longterm care’.
It describes the measurements of quality improvement between 2007 and 2009 based on two outcome sets, professional outcome measures and clientrelated outcome measures and investigate whether structure features are associated with these quality outcomes and quality improvement between those years on these outcomes. Further, the article describes the results of an investigation to successful quality improvement activities which lead to quality improvement and whether a corporate structure influences the quality improvement. Next, case studies with best and worst practices in quality improvement are described to identify which factors are crucial for being successful in quality improvement at organisation level. At the end, several methodological issues and a reflection on the mechanism of quality improvement and implications for practice are described.
