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Objectives: To investigate the effect of an educational and feedback intervention to enhance consideration of sex differences in clinical guideline development., Design: Preintervention and postintervention questionnaires in intervention and control groups. Content analysis of intervention guidelines and former versions., Setting: Guideline consultants, working-group members and guideline documents of two Dutch guideline-developing organisations., Main Outcome Measures: Attitudes of guideline developers concerning the importance of considering sex differences and the number of the sex-specific statements in the contents of guideline documents., Results: The attitude of the intervention group did not change significantly relative to the control group. Consideration of sex-related factors within the guidelines increased relative to available previous versions., Conclusion: Education and expert feedback may increase consideration of sex differences in guidelines. Further efforts are needed to implement and test these interventions.

Background: There is growing recognition of patients' contributions to setting objectives for their own care, improving health outcomes and evaluating care., Objective: To quantify the extent to which European hospitals have implemented strategies to promote a patient-centred approach, and to assess whether these strategies are associated with hospital characteristics and the development of the hospital's quality improvement system., Design: Cross-sectional survey of 351 European hospital managers and professionals., Main Outcome Measures: Patients' rights, patient information and empowerment, patient involvement in quality management, learning from patients, and patient hotel services at the hospital and ward level were assessed. The hypothesis that the implementation of strategies to improve patient-centredness is associated with hospital characteristics, including maturity of the hospital's quality management system, was tested using binary logistic regression., Results: In general, hospitals reported high implementation of policies for patients' rights (85.5%) and informed consent (93%), whereas strategies to involve patients (71%) and learn from their experience (66%) were less frequently implemented. For 13 out of 18 hospital strategies, institutions with a more developed quality improvement system consistently reported better results (percentage differences within maturity classification ranged from 12.4% to 46.6%). The strength of association between implementation of patient-centredness strategies and the quality improvement system, however, seemed lower at the ward than at the hospital level. Some associations (OR 2.1 to 5.1) disappeared or were weaker after adjustment for potential confounding variables (OR 2.2 to 3.7)., Conclusions: Although quality improvement systems seem to be effective with regard to the implementation of selected patient-centredness strategies, they seem to be insufficient to ensure widespread implementation of patient-centredness throughout the organisation.

Context: This study was part of the Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies (MARQuIS) research project on patients crossing borders, a study to investigate quality improvement strategies in healthcare systems across the European Union (EU)., Aim: To explore the association between the implementation of quality improvement strategies in hospitals and hospitals' success in meeting defined quality requirements that are considered intermediate outputs of the care process., Methods: Data regarding the implementation of seven quality improvement strategies (accreditation, organisational quality management programmes, audit and internal assessment of clinical standards, patient safety systems, clinical practice guidelines, performance indicators and systems for obtaining patients' views) and four dimensions of outputs (clinical, safety, patient-centredness and cross-border patient-centredness) were collected from 389 acute care hospitals in eight EU countries using a web-based questionnaire. In a second phase, 89 of these hospitals participated in an on-site audit by independent surveyors. Pearson correlation and linear regression models were used to explore associations and relations between quality improvement strategies and achievement of outputs., Results: Positive associations were found between six internal quality improvement strategies and hospital outputs. The quality improvement strategies could be reasonably subsumed under one latent index which explained about half of their variation. The analysis of outputs concluded that the outputs can also be considered part of a single construct. The findings indicate that the implementation of internal as well as external quality improvement strategies in hospitals has beneficial effects on the hospital outputs studied here., Conclusion: The implementation of internal quality improvement strategies as well as external assessment systems should be promoted.

Background: In the past decade the issue of patient mobility has emerged on the European health policy agenda. Although the volume of patients crossing borders to obtain healthcare is low, it is increasing continuously and, due to its legal, financial and medical implications, has generated considerable interest among health policy and other decision makers. However, there is little information available on the safety and patient-centredness of cross-border care and neither governments nor citizens have an explicit basis for comparing healthcare delivery in Europe., Methods: This study investigated the viewpoints of patients, professionals and healthcare financiers on the safety and patient-centredness of cross-border care. Qualitative interviews were carried out during 2005 and early 2006 with 40 patients, 30 professionals (doctors, nurses and managers) and 3 healthcare-financing bodies., Results: Although cross-border care has become a common issue in many European countries, there remain uncertainties on the side of each of the parties addressed--patients, professionals and financiers--with regard to the provision of cross-border care. One of the most striking results of this project is the current lack of research on systematic knowledge on the quality of cross-border care., Conclusion: Many of the issues identified through this research may have a potential impact on the quality and safety of cross-border care and will support further investigation and help shape the health policy agenda on patients crossing borders in European Union countries.

This article summarises the significant lessons to be drawn from, and the policy implications of, the findings of the Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies (MARQuIS) project--a part of the suite of research projects intended to support policy established by the European Commission through its Sixth Framework Programme. The article first reviews the findings of MARQuIS and their implications for healthcare providers (and particularly for hospitals), and then addresses the broader policy implications for member states of the European Union (EU) and for the commission itself. Against the background of the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, it then outlines a number of future areas for research to inform policy and practice in quality and safety in Europe. The article concludes that at this stage, a unique EU-wide quality improvement system for hospitals does not seem to be feasible or effective. Because of possible future community action in this field, attention should focus on the use of existing research on quality and safety strategies in healthcare, with the aim of combining soft measures to accelerate mutual learning. Concrete measures should be considered only in areas for which there is substantial evidence and effective implementation can be ensured.

Aim: This study, part of the Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies (MARQuIS) research project focusing on cross-border patients in Europe, investigated quality policies and improvement in healthcare systems across the European Union (EU). The aim was to develop a classification scheme for the level of quality improvement (maturity) in EU hospitals, in order to evaluate hospitals according to the maturity of their quality improvement activities., Methods: A web-based questionnaire survey designed to measure quality improvement in EU hospitals was used as the basis for the classification scheme. Items included for the development of an evaluation tool--the maturity index--were considered important contributors to quality improvement. The four-stage quality cycle (plan, do, check and act) was used to determine the level of maturity of the various items. Psychometric properties of the classification scheme were assessed, and validation analyses were performed., Results: A total of 389 hospitals participated in a questionnaire survey; response rates varied by country. For a final sample of 349 hospitals, it was possible to construct a quality improvement maturity index which consisted of seven domains and 113 items. The results of independent analyses sustained the validity of the index, which was useful in differentiating between hospitals in the research sample according to the maturity of their quality improvement system (defined as the total of all quality improvement activities)., Discussion: Further research is recommended to develop an instrument which for use in the future as a practical tool to evaluate the maturity of hospital quality improvement systems.

Context: This study was part of the Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies (MARQuIS) research project investigating the impact of quality improvement strategies on hospital care in various countries of the European Union (EU), in relation to specific needs of cross-border patients., Aim: This paper describes how EU hospitals have applied seven quality improvement strategies previously defined by the MARQuIS study: organisational quality management programmes; systems for obtaining patients' views; patient safety systems; audit and internal assessment of clinical standards; clinical and practice guidelines; performance indicators; and external assessment., Methods: A web-based questionnaire was used to survey acute care hospitals in eight EU countries. The reported findings were later validated via on-site survey and site visits in a sample of the participating hospitals. Data collection took place from April to August 2006., Results: 389 hospitals participated in the survey; response rates varied per country. All seven quality improvement strategies were widely used in European countries. Activities related to external assessment were the most broadly applied across Europe, and activities related to patient involvement were the least widely implemented. No one country implemented all quality strategies at all hospitals. There were no differences between participating hospitals in western and eastern European countries regarding the application of quality improvement strategies., Conclusions: Implementation varied per country and per quality improvement strategy, leaving considerable scope for progress in quality improvements. The results may contribute to benchmarking activities in European countries, and point to further areas of research to explore the relationship between the application of quality improvement strategies and actual hospital performance.

This paper reviews safety initiatives in the health systems of the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US. Initiatives to tackle safety shortcomings involve public-private collaborations. Patient safety agencies (to institute learning, action and safety culture), adverse event reporting and, to a lesser extent, safety related performance indicators are currently used to design safer health systems. Their benefits are mixed, but there is little debate as to their possible side effects. Foreseeable adverse effects of multiple safety organisations stem from them being too many, too vague, too narrowly focused, threatened by the medical practice environment, and too optimistic. Safety related performance indicators are most developed in the US but suffer from inadequacies of administrative data, underreporting, variable indicator definitions, "extended" use, and low sensitivity of the diagnosis coding system, and arguable preventability of the prescribed conditions. A critical appraisal of the implications of these deficiencies is important to assure the safety of current health system safety initiatives and to establish evidence based safety. It is necessary to embed health system safety (as well as patient safety) in the societal culture, structures, and policies which promote effective, user centred, high performance care while allowing for healthy innovation.

Objective: To assess the appropriateness of and variation in intention-to-treat decisions in the management of depression in the Netherlands., Design: Mailed survey with 22 paper cases (vignettes) based on a population study., Setting: A random sample from four professional groups in the Dutch mental healthcare system., Subjects: 264 general practitioners, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and clinical psychologists., Main Outcome Measures: Each vignette contained information on a number of patient characteristics taken from three national depression guidelines. The distribution of patient characteristics was based on data from a population study. Respondents were asked to choose the best treatment option and the best treatment setting. For each vignette we examined which of the selected treatments was appropriate according to the recommendations of the three published Dutch clinical guidelines and a panel of experts., Results: 31% of all intention-to-treat decisions were not consistent with the guidelines. Overall, less severe depression, alcohol abuse, psychotic features, and lack of social resources were related to more inappropriate judgements. There was considerable variation between the professional groups: psychiatrists made more appropriate choices than the other professions although they had the highest rate of overtreatment., Conclusions: There is sufficient variation in the intentions to treat depression to give it priority in quality assessment and guideline development. Efforts to achieve appropriate care should focus on treatment indications, referral patterns, and overtreatment.