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Measuring Health Care Quality: Comparing and Contrasting the Medical and the Marketing ApproachesMarketing and Industrial Distribution Department, School of Business, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research and Education, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL. Health care quality, a key concept for medical practice and research, is also a widely used construct in health care administration and marketing research. We explored discipline-specific differences in the definition of quality, with the intent of finding a more unified approach. We summarized definitions and basic conceptual approaches to quality in both disciplines and then compared them on several attributes: basic goals, sources of measurement, role of patient perceptions, role of health care personnel, and need for risk adjustment. We developed a conceptual model combining the 2 approaches. Both disciplines could benefit from broadening their outcome measures. Patient satisfaction deserves more attention from medical researchers, whereas marketing approaches should go beyond using patient satisfaction as the only outcome of interest. It is conceptually feasible to integrate medical and marketing approaches to quality, with important insights resulting from this integration.
Key Words: Consumer satisfaction • health care quality • marketing • outcomes of care • patient satisfaction • processes of care
American Journal of Medical Quality, Vol. 17, No. 4,
136-144 (2002) This article has been cited by other articles:
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