Total quality management in health care.

Studying 'the best way of doing things' does expedite performance improvement. Using cost as the only measure of health care has provided a one dimensional view of 'the best'. Now there is an urgency to improve the value of clinical outcomes, the real product of health care. For this to be achieved by any method, more effective and comparable measures of quality are needed to focus improvement efforts. This paper comments on the application of the best practice principles, developed for other Australian industries, to health care.