Quality management in anaesthesia practice: Chance and challenge

Quality of care and costs are getting closer together. Whereas costs and qu ality management did not play a substantial role 30 yea rs ago, the consump tion of resources nowadays is part of the outcome of quality of care. The d efinition of quality must be seen in the dimensions of structure,process an d result. Resulting from newly developed clinical practice, guidelines are planned as instruments for cost containment in near future. Those guideline s may end up in a quality management system. The most wellknown european ba sic of such a quality management system are the DIN EN ISO 9000 f and the E FQM. The ISO 9001 and the European Quality Award became the most common bas e of evaluation for certification of quality management systems in Organisa tions europeanwide. Whereas the ISO 9001 does not give any information abou t the real achieved quality, the European Quality Award reflects the proces s. Guidelines are necessary to prove the cost effectiveness of measures of quality control and quality assurance since too much quality control and as surance may result in increased overall consumption of resources, leading t o a reduction in the quality of care when ensuring that the overall budget is covered.