Development of standards of care--the US experience.

Continuous quality improvement should be the goal of the dental profession. With the development of guidelines and standards of care we have for the first time developed a baseline against which we can evaluate the care provided by the dental profession. It has been said that 'you cannot manage what you cannot measure and you cannot chart improvement without a baseline'. Now that we have a baseline, we will be able to objectively assess improvement in the care which we provide. I believe that we must broaden the concepts of continuous quality improvement beyond that of auditing for the means of identifying the 'bad apple'. Health care today is very good, and if members of the dental profession worldwide work together, we can make it even better.