Quality improvement of patient care: some preliminary results of a hospital-wide quality-assurance project at the University Hospital of Maastricht.

Dutch hospitals have to design their quality-assessment programmes within the boundaries set by "indirect government legislation". At the University hospital of Maastricht a five-stage project was started in 1985 to construct a hospital-wide quality-assurance organisation that includes regular review of the quality of professional performance. This paper will describe intermediate results of the first stage and will discuss the results of different subsurveys undertaken to assess the current level of quality of care and several key-issues conditional to the implementation of such a hospital-wide structure in the existing organisation of a University hospital. Finally the results of the first stage will be contrasted with external legislative standards and internal needs of the University hospital recognised during assessment of the current situation.