The Measurement of Quality

One of the main objectives of the MOCHA project is to assess the quality of paediatric primary care including its interaction with secondary as well as social service provision. To achieve this aim it is necessary to identify complex and multidimensional relationships between structural assets, organizational characteristics and clinical procedures adopted in EU countries. This analysis will be based on following steps: - Analysis of requirements for measurements of the quality and outcomes at macro, meso and micro levels based on scenarios and uses cases agreed upon within the project; - Identification of data sources and published statistical data as well as analysis of the increasingly available large data sets and registers both international and country-specific; - Identification of other candidate locally developed data sources provided by country agents collaborating in the project; - Application of a structural equation model (SEM) to identify latent variables inferred by the correlation between observed measured variables. This will result in the development of new and innovative measures of quality and outcome to support the modelling of effective, affordable and sustainable child-centric provision. In particular, the results of this analysis will provide an overview of the challenges and opportunities encountered in establishing effective outcomes measurement systems for program evaluation. Moreover, it will elaborate recommendations for expanding and enhancing current paediatric primary care outcome measurement efforts to achieve three MOCHA primary goals: - comprehensive service assessment, - meaningful data collection and interpretation, and - outcomes-driven program design and service provision.