As policy makers and others seek to reduce health care cost growth while improving health care quality, one approach gaining momentum is fee-for-value reimbursement. This payment strategy maintains the traditional fee-for-service arrangement but includes quality and spending incentives. We examined Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan's Physician Group Incentive Program, which uses a fee-for-valu...

Teams make up the building blocks of health care and every team—from the executive to the coal face—is composed of diVerent professionals, ideally possessing a variety of skills necessary to produce safe and eVective care. We are constantly reminded of the value of diversity within teams, but the reality is that working together from a variety of perspectives is sometimes diYcult to achieve. Th...

A growing number of countries worldwide are recognising a common need to build systemic capacity for safeguarding and improving quality of health care. Each country has a unique set of priorities and dynamics driving the speed and the substance of the quality agenda, constrained by the reality of the availability and distribution of resources. While acknowledging the considerable variation in c...

Teams make up the building blocks of health care and every team—from the executive to the coal face—is composed of diVerent professionals, ideally possessing a variety of skills necessary to produce safe and eVective care. We are constantly reminded of the value of diversity within teams, but the reality is that working together from a variety of perspectives is sometimes diYcult to achieve. Th...

Modern approaches to improvement in health care need modern approaches to measurement. Our traditional use of matrices of retrospective data has been described as like “trying to drive a car by looking through the rear view mirror”. Statistical process control tools appear to have much to oVer despite the concerns expressed about using techniques taken from industry. In this issue of Quality in...

The involvement of patients in the decisions about their treatment or care seems an unquestionable advance. There are philosophical and ethical justifications for this. Evidence is also accruing about its benefits—namely, increased satisfaction with care and communication, increased certainty about making the best decision, reduced anxiety levels, and greater adherence to chosen management plan...