Contribution to quality
Physician and scholar whose framework connected the setting of care, the work performed, and the outcomes achieved. This profile introduces the ideas most closely associated with this pioneer and explains how healthcare teams can use them as a starting point for learning and improvement.
The Donabedian model
Structure
The settings, people, resources, and organizational arrangements supporting care.
Process
What healthcare teams and patients do in delivering and receiving care.
Outcome
The changes in health, experience, behavior, or knowledge associated with care.
Seven attributes of quality
Donabedian described quality through efficacy, effectiveness, efficiency, optimality, acceptability, legitimacy, and equity. Healthcare organizations can use these attributes to examine quality from clinical, patient, organizational, and societal perspectives.
Applying the model in hospitals
A hospital might assess staffing and equipment as structure, adherence to a clinical pathway as process, and complications or patient-reported experience as outcomes. The three views should be interpreted together rather than treated as isolated scores.