title: Are the Dutch long-term care organizations getting better? A trend study of quality indicators between 2007 and 2009 and the patterns of regional influences on performance.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  and setting The Dutch long-term care organizations, providing somatic care, psycho-geriatric care and home care, have to measure the quality of care through client-related and professional indicators since 2007. At the same time, competition was introduced with regional stimuli from healthcare insurers. The first aim of this study is to determine the trends of the national performance on client-related and professional quality indicators for the period 2007-09 in long-term care organizations in the Netherlands. The second aim is to determine the influence of the region on the quality performance in 2009.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed trend analyses on the indicators of clients of 2115 long-term care organizations. We used multivariate analyses to determine the difference in national performance between 2007 and 2009 and to calculate the influence of the region on the performance of 2009.
  
  
  METHODS
  None.
  
  
  METHODS
  Client-related and professional indicators.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The national performance on client-related indicators for somatic care and home care increased and for psycho-geriatric care the quality performance became worse. The professional indicators for intramural care improved between 2007 and 2009. Region influences the performance. In general, organizations in the west of the Netherlands performed worse than other regions (with exception of home care).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study suggests that working with quality indicators in long-term care organizations for older people may lead to a better performance on several indicators. The influence of the region on the quality is significant, which could be caused by Dutch healthcare insurers.
authors: Scientific Institute for Quality of Healthcare, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, PO Box 9101, 114 IQ Healthcare, 6500 HB Nijmegen. s.winters@iq.umcn.nl.
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Winters-Van Der Meer
authors: R B
authors: RB
authors: Kool
authors: N S
authors: NS
authors: Klazinga
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Huijsman
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D009426:Netherlands; D058996:Quality Improvement / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends
keywords: quality indicators; quality management; quality measurement