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The authors describe a five-year continuous quality improvement program that monitors inpatient and outpatient satisfaction with emergency services offered by a multi-institutional health care system. The program provides managers with the information to develop detailed plans for service improvement and suggests ways to appraise performance and recognize personnel.

The present study was designed to test the clinical hunch that members of high-risk groups, such as athletes, have psychological traits similar to persons with eating disorders. Three groups of adolescent females (eating-disordered, athletes, and students) were studied to determine their menstrual, dieting, and exercise patterns and their self-images. Although the three groups fell on a continuum of anorexic-like behaviors, their self-images were not on a similar continuum. Eating-disordered females had the poorest self-images while athletes were the best adjusted of all three groups. Eating-disordered subjects exhibited extremely low scores on emotional tone and social relationships, suggesting that these dimensions of self-image may be characteristic which clearly distinguish the eating-disordered from so-called high-risk persons.