Focused quality improvement in health care: the quality, satisfaction, performance technique applied in internal medicine.

Service quality assessments are dominated by simple analysis of questionnaire data. Such methods generally lack validity and reliability. Moreover, they do not have a target side defining what actions patient satisfaction should lead to from a management point of view. The quality, satisfaction, performance method, a technique with high validity, was applied in an internal medicine setting. The method appears to offer a unique way to relate desired results of care to different processes and structures in the clinic as well as incentives to intervene to improve the quality of care.