Capturing the true meaning of quality in health services

Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyApr 10 2025Research shows that despite frequent evaluations, a lot remains unknown about the quality of municipal health and care services.Everyone wants good quality healthcare, but what exactly is quality and how do you measure it?Is it to do with the waiting time for home care services? Or how many nursing home residents have had medical supervision in the past year? Or whether the medication lists have been checked recently?"These are important aspects that are all worth monitoring. The problem is that quality cannot be easily reduced to a quantifiable value,"said Randi Olsson Haave, an assistant professor and PhD research fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Gjøvik."See me as a person"Haave is in the process of completing a PhD on quality in municipal health and care services in Norway, and the methods used to monitor it."What particularly stands out in my research is how much being seen and treated as...