Quality of care for gastrointestinal conditions: a primer for gastroenterologists.

The Institute of Medicine's publications To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm publicized the widespread deficits in health-care quality. The quality of care for digestive diseases has not been evaluated comprehensively, although emerging literature suggests that the gap between recommended care and actual practice may be quite substantial. This paper reviews the history of, the rationale behind, and current work related to quality of care and quality improvement in the area of digestive diseases, with particular attention to colonoscopy, inflammatory bowel diseases, gastroesophageal reflux disease, chronic hepatitis C virus infection, and liver transplantation.