Management of the quality of the health-care

Clinical and ethical aspects

Abstract

One of the most frequent topics of discussion in clinical and public health medicine is the difficulty to guarantee high quality levels in hospital and outpatients care and - at the same time - to contain the constantly increasing costs. The Italian National Health Service - as it happens in most Western countries - is now deeply involved in this field, but the information and training levels of health care professionals seems - so far - inadequate to the task. However, studies concerning a more rational use of financial resources are more frequent than in the past. Among them, the appropriateness of hospital admissions is a recurrent theme. The Authors analyze the possible new fields of intervention, strongly encouraged by the recently approved “DRGs-based” prospective payment system for italian hospitals and by the shortly incoming “hospital accreditation” legislation. Finally, the matter is analyzed from the point of view of personalistic bioethics.