Quality improvement, clinical research, and quality improvement research--opportunities for integration.
The opportunity to mobilize linkages between quality improvement (QI) and research is at an early stage. This article describes some of the opportunities for and challenges of integrating QI and more traditional forms of clinical research to achieve broad improvements in medical care. The authors suggest that such integration would include more active experimentation in the health care delivery system and that the application of QI methods offers a rational, effective, and reasonably fast method to support the learning required to adapt new knowledge to specific practice environments and to create and test innovations needed to improve systems of care delivery.
Margolis
Peter
P
Center for Health Care Quality, Division of Health Policy and Clinical Effectiveness, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Mail Location 7014, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3039, USA. peter.margolis@cchmc.org
Provost
Lloyd P
LP
Schoettker
Pamela J
PJ
Britto
Maria T
MT
D035843:Biomedical Research; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D017749:Total Quality Management; D014481:United States