Health care quality in the 21st century.

The concepts of healthcare quality have evolved over the years. Many stakeholders have become quite engaged in the movement towards improvement in healthcare quality and safety. The standardization and national endorsement of performance measures, the assessment of outcomes, and the reporting for accountability are now being coupled with more transparency, and technological innovation. As the quality landscape changes to evaluation of episodes of care and performance at the individual clinician level measures (primary and specialty care), collaboration is critical among consumers, purchasers, measure developers, implementers of measures to identify and adopt national standards to tell a clear story of healthcare quality.