Résumé

Quality of care is measured in many countries (1). However, using quality indicators (QIs) to assess the performance of health care organizations (HCO) is a new development in the management and health services research fields (2) because national quality assessment initiatives are relatively recent. In the United States, that is well advanced in the field of quality measurement, the first initiatives including the Hedis project, the Joint Commission ORYX initiative, Hospital Compare, and the development of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (3-6) date back to the nineties. The Australian Council on Health Care Standards, the Ontario Hospitals Association in Canada, and the Clinical Indicators Support Teams of Scotland were launched just before 2000 (3, 7-10). The Dutch, UK and German programs are more recent (11, 12). Likewise, the Performance Assessment Tool for Quality Improvement in Hospital (PATH) supported by the World Health Organization, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) initiatives were developed during the last decade (3, 12-14).