Health Care Reform
The U.S. health care system can be improved through quality-improvement initiatives and with cooperation between federal and private organizations, according to a paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The authors call on independent health care organizations to distinguish between traditional quality-improvement efforts and those that include research on people. Human research projects should entail ethical supervision by a review board, a level of oversight that is unnecessary for traditional quality-improvement measures, according to the paper.
Researchers conclude that quality-improvement initiatives can enhance strategies for improving the U.S. health care system but must be conducted ethically with quantitative evaluation (Lynn et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, May 2007).