It gets better if you do? Measuring quality care in Puerto Rico.
Quantifying quality is supposed to unite health policy, health plans, and health care consumers in a circuit of constant improvement. In practice, significant gulfs separate how policymakers, health plan administrators, and consumers write and talk about quality. Drawing on policy literature, ethnography inside a managed care organization, and interviews with health plan members, this article examines a quality improvement program at a health plan in Puerto Rico. The findings challenge the assumption underwriting neoliberal health policy that quality measurement leads to quality improvement.
Mulligan
Jessica
J
Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy, Connecticut College, New London, CT 06320, USA. jessica.mulligan@conncoll.edu
D006801:Humans; D008329:Managed Care Programs; D057766:Policy; D011647:Puerto Rico; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods; D011787:Quality of Health Care