MARQuIS: short overview

The acronym MARQuIS stands for Methods of Assessing Response to Quality Improvement Strategies.

Context of the project:

Neither governments nor citizens have an explicit basis for comparing health care delivery or for making choices about where to go for their health care. Simultaneously a multitude of (national) quality strategies is applied in European health care systems to assess, assure and improve the quality of care.

Objectives:

The objectives of this study are:
1. To identify, compare and assess the formal adoption by EU member states of different quality strategies at a national level (including accreditation, certification, peer review (visitatie)), clinical guidelines, performance indicators, patient surveys etc)
2. To identify and synthesise the quality requirements for cross-border patients as expressed by European regulation, jurisprudence, guidance and research, and other sources as insurance contracts and patients' expressed needs
3. To describe in a sample of states how hospitals have applied national quality strategies, meet the defined requirements of cross-border patients and variables of organisation and methodology associated with meeting them.
4. To use these data to draw conclusions about the association of various national quality strategies and compliance with defined requirements and the need for developing formal quality procedures at EU level

Setting:

EU member and accession states

Expected outcomes:

This project will help to assess the value of different quality strategies. It will provide needed information for countries when contracting care for patients moving across borders and for individual hospitals when reviewing the design of their quality strategies . Also, the results will provide evidence-based advice for further development of formal quality procedures at EU level for health care institutions or for further developing existing approaches.

Project Coordinator

Prof. Rosa Suņol
Avedis Donabedian Foundation
E-mail: marquis@fadq.org

Project partners

• European Hospital and Healthcare Federation (HOPE), Belgium


• European Society for Quality in Healthcare (ESQH), Ireland


• Centre for Research and Advanced Training (CEREF), Italy


• Avedis Donabedian Foundation (FAD), Spain


• Department of Social Medicine, Academic Medical Centre / University of Amsterdam,
  The Netherlands


• Dutch Institute for Healthcare Improvement (CBO), The Netherlands


• University of Manchester / Manchester Centre for Healthcare Management,
  United Kingdom


• National Centre for Quality Assessment in Health Care (NCQA), Poland