A comparison of approaches to health service quality in the UK, USA & Sweden and of the use of organizational audit frameworks

Health care reforms in the UK, USA and Sweden are leading health providers and purchasers to pay more attention to quality. This paper considers different approaches to proving and improving quality before and after 1990 in these three countries. The second part of the paper describes different frameworks for auditing health service quality, such as the ISO 9000 and US Malcum Baldridge award. It considers how purchasers can use these frameworks in purchasing services, and how providers can use the frameworks to assess and improve their own service quality.