The stages of the research in the MARQuIS project will be as follows:
- First stage: Review of the present situation.
o Policy analysis of existing quality strategies: Review of existing regulatory mechanisms, for quality improvement and to relate these to the values, policies and directives of the European Union with respect to patient safety, empowerment and access across borders.
o Identify, compare and assess the formal adoption by Member States of different quality strategies at national level to define measure and improve standards of quality and safety.
o Review of national health and payment statistics to identify quantity and type of cross-border care occurrence in Europe.
- Second stage: Definition of key requirements for securing patient empowerment and safety in hospital care:
o Identification of quality requirements for patients when moving across border to seek care.
o Identification of quality requirement for healthcare professionals regarding treatment of foreign residents, with representatives of health financers, managers of health facilities and health professionals (doctors and nurses).
- Third stage: Development and application of a framework and a set of measures to evaluate the compliance of hospitals with these requirements and relate that to their use of external and internal quality strategies.
o All the previous information will be used to develop a set of measures to evaluate the use of quality strategies and the compliance of hospitals with key requirements for quality and safety when patients move across borders.
o Application of the measures for evaluating the compliance of institutions with these requirements and relate that to their use of quality strategies (execution of a questionnaire survey and an in-depth audit).
- Fourth stage: Aggregation and analysis of the findings of the first three stages
o Aggregate and analyse the findings in order to make conclusions and develop recommendations to the EU.
