Measuring quality in long-term care: a 360-degree approach.

Policy makers and providers have taken steps to address quality concerns in acute and Long-term care (LTC); however, serious quality problems remain. Efforts to measure quality have focused primarily on technical quality, assessing whether certain healthcare outcomes are achieved. Advocates for a patient-centered approach urge a shift to an assessment of functional quality that would include an overall evaluation of the service encounter that is heavily reliant on input from the service recipient. This article provides a discussion of why measuring quality in LTC is more challenging. Because a more comprehensive approach to quality is warranted in LTC, recommendations are made for using a 360-degree approach.