General measures apply to all systems and are more likely to capture adverse events. Condition-specific measures are more likely to capture benefits of care but could also capture adverse consequences. Patient-centered outcomes measure function, comfort, and likelihood of survival. Measures that are proxies for the patient include objective clinical data, health care activities, and caregiver activities. From a knowledge base of outcome measures, one can generate prompts for health outcomes information to record on the patient record.
Most organizations are able to use some measures to show they provide efficient and effective care.
In health care, we do not collect and provide timely, regular and reliable information about either access to care or the results of health care activities. Consequently, we cannot properly allocate resources or manage care. However, from routinely collected patient health status and outcomes of care data, we can generate new knowledge about effective health care. This information can be fed back to caregivers, administrators, and researchers for continuous quality improvement. The purpose of health care activities is to maintain or improve health status.