title: The value of monitoring outcomes should be measured by the appropriateness of the response.
abstract: Real-time monitoring of outcomes is becoming increasingly feasible in health care, and with it the hope of early detection of problems and the ability to tell whether interventions are having their desired effect. The next step should be to try to demonstrate that the reports of such monitoring systems lead to reasonable responses and valid inferences about causality, and that we are not chasing red herrings.
authors.affiliation: VA Health Services Research & Development Center of Excellence, and Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. thofer@umich.edu
authors.forename: Timothy P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Hofer
mesh_terms: D003199:Computer Systems / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D016896:Treatment Outcome