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Quality improvement in gastroenterology: a US perspective

Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology volume 5, pages 550–551 (2008)Cite this article

'To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System' is the title of a report released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1999.1 The report raised awareness of medical complications and claimed that as many as 98,000 people die each year in the US because of medical errors. A later report 'Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century' issued by the IOM advocated a full revamping of the US health-care system to improve quality.2 These reports stimulated local and national efforts by hospitals, health-care systems, medical-specialty societies and, to a lesser extent, group practices, to produce measurement tools for reporting clinical performance. The public in general and individual patients are looking and asking for evidence that their physicians are of good quality.

Recognizing that as a specialty, gastroenterology, unlike some other specialties, was not prepared to make the quality of its work transparent to the public because of a lack of well-defined measures of quality, gastroenterology societies began developing task forces and units to correct this deficiency. In 2005, the American Gastroenterological Association published its 'Task Force on Quality in Practice' recommendations, which concluded that if gastroenterologists do not develop and implement meaningful quality measures, the purchasers and users of gastroenterology services will define both how this type of medicine should be practiced and the relative value of gastroenterologists.3

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References

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  1. Suite 204, 5320 Providence Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23464, USA ixp@cox.net

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IM Pike is a Gastroenterologist with the Gastrointestinal and Liver Specialists of Tidewater, PLLC, Virginia Beach, and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk, VA, USA.,

    Irving M Pike

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Pike, I. Quality improvement in gastroenterology: a US perspective. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 5, 550–551 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpgasthep1231

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