title: [Quality assurance: concepts, actions and reflexions].
abstract: Importance that the topic of quality of medical care has acquired in recent years, a number of concepts have been utilized to mean many strategies to improve the quality of care. This situation has frequently created confusion between terms such as: quality assessment, quality assurance, total quality management, quality guarantee, etc. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework that allows not only to clarify the concepts but also the actions towards the improvement of the quality of care. Therefore, a multidimensional matrix is also proposed in order to classify the multiple actions referred about in the literature and to organize them. The conclusions are: 1) The term "Quality guarantee", at least in spanish, is absolutely pertinent when referred to the quality of medical care; 2) This concept becomes a solid starting point to implement concret actions by integrating different concepts and avoiding confusions; 3) The multidimensional matrix allows to systematize multiple actions; 4) Since there was not a similar conceptual framework it is expected that this paper allows to close the gap between thinking and doing on behalf of every body.
authors.affiliation: Fundación Mexicana para la Salud.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ruelas Barajas
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008800:Mexico; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000639:trends; D017749:Total Quality Management
vernacular_title: Sobre la garantía de la calidad: conceptos, acciones y reflexiones.