Association of Quality of Care with Survival of Elderly Managed Care Patients.

The article presents an abstract of the article "Quality of Care Is Associated with Survival in Vulnerable Older Patients," published in the August 16, 2005 issue of the journal "Annals of Internal Medicine," vol. 143. In response to the question related to the problem, the author replied that evaluations of the quality of medical care often focus on processes of care, such as how often patients receive certain tests or treatments. Some people believe that a better way to measure quality of care would be to look at patient outcomes, such as how often they become sick enough to need hospitalization or how long they live. The author says that researchers found that the fewer quality-of-care measures that a patient's care met, the more likely a person was to die during the 3 years of follow-up.