Quality measures need to be developed carefully to avoid being misinterpreted

To make quality indicators useful NHS providers need to define what they mean by quality, what they aim to gain by measuring it, how they are going to do this, and what they will do with the resulting data, says a health service think tank.

A discussion paper from the King’s Fund, says that measuring the quality and safety of health care is complex and challenging, and the measures used are often difficult to interpret. For example, league tables can be misinterpreted and mislead patients, distort …