[The quality of health care services. A general proposal for clinical services].

INTRODUCTION: Quality is one of the strategic elements on which changes and improvement of modern healthcare systems is based. Study of the quality of health care implies several approaches, which are traditionally of different significance to patients, professionals and managers. The quality of healthcare systems depends on healthcare policy, on doing the right things correctly, of the impression that the givers and receivers of care have of the organization, of the definition of service attending to both inpatients and out patients and the satisfactory interaction between them. DEVELOPMENT: In this paper we give a synthesis of different concepts of the quality of care in recent years. We consider different approaches for the evaluation of quality from the practical aspect, and finally we propose a type of program for the quality of a clinical department, which within the strategic plan of the hospital, should be orientated towards the patient, and be based on three concepts: scientific-technical or physical quality, functional or interactive quality and corporate quality.