The Danish Health Care Quality Assessment Programme
The Danish Health Care Quality Assessment Programme is a joint programme, intended
to support a continuous quality improvement of the Danish health care service
as a whole. In principle, the Quality Programme comprises all patient pathways
in the health care services. The aim of the Quality Programme is to promote
good patient pathways, so as to ensure that the patients experience improved quality.
The Quality Programme must support higher trans-parency of quality and promote
a continuous, improvement of clinical, professional and or-ganisational quality
in patient pathways. The Quality Programme will be developed in successive
versions over a number of years. The first version will comprise all Danish, publicly
financed hospitals, including cooperation with and relations to other institutions
and sectors. The Quality Programme consists of a number of tools and support
activities made available to the health care institutions and is based on continuous
self-assessment supplemented by a pe-riodic external review. The Quality
Programme originates from the Economy Agreements for 2002 and 2003 be-tween the
Government, Danish Region and the Copenhagen Hospital Cooperation. As a result
of the Economy Agreements, a Steering Committee has been established, consisting
of Dan-ish Regions, The Copenhagen Hospital Cooperation (H: S), the Ministry of
the Interior and Health, and the National Board of Health. The Chief Medical Officer
chairs the Committee. The development is headed by the steering committee
with the assistance of a project secre-tariat. The project secretariat
undertakes the development in cooperation with Danish and foreign expertise. The
major stakeholders in health care will be involved in development on an ongoing
basis, so as to ensure that the Quality Programme has solid anchoring.
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DENMARK