__________________ is the skill and competence of health professionals and the ability of diagnostic or therapeutic equipment, procedures, and systems to accomplish what they are meant to accomplish, reliably and effectively.

Generally, medical record review and prospective data collection are considered the most time-intensive and
expensive ways to collect information. Many reserve these methods for highly specialized improvement projects or
use them t o answer questions t hat have:

Health organizations measure performance to meet multiple internal and external needs and demands. Internal
quality improvement literature identifies some fundamental purposes for conducting performance measurement
such as:

"Quality is the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired
health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge." This is the definition of Quality care often
quoted by:

The syndrome of stockpiling is proven to be ineffective and inefficient. It also creates quality issues. This approach provides little value to the data collection effort and is one of the biggest mistake quality improvement teams make.
Rather than provide a rich source of information, this approach unnecessarily derives up: