Child health groups and pediatric special interest subgroups of larger organizations have all contributed to these tools on the grounds that children present unique problems and circumstances that warrant careful differentiation from the larger population of consumers. These combined efforts have produced a disjointed and varied collection of criteria against which to measure quality. As quality of care becomes a more visible public debate, increased attention will be given to the effectiveness of monitoring processes and standards expected by parents. In today's managed care environments, quality measurement should focus on the needs of consumers who can use information to ask questions and make choices. Thus, there has been a growing demand for objective, comparative information about performance of health care providers creating a need for specific, relevant practice standards and data-driven evaluation that includes outcomes data.
Consumers turn to the experts.
For a number of parochial and economic reasons, professional child-health nursing associations and specialty groups have been somewhat isolated with their narrow bands of constituents. Thus, the benefits of a comprehensive, linked set of recommendations for children have never been realized. The goal of the conference was to systematically develop a conceptually organized and easily accessible collection of standards from a variety of pediatric and child health organizations and interest groups in order to link them with measures of quality for providers, researchers, policy makers, and consumers of child health services. As the experts in child health care, this group explored similarities and differences in their respective documents that guide the practice of nursing. The participants recognized early that these objectives would need continued discussion beyond a one-day meeting.