Quality assurance in ambulatory nutritional care. I. Past, present, and future.

Public health nutritionists have begun to coordinate efforts toward development of national standards for ambulatory nutritional care by writing and field testing criteria for selected target populations of pregnant women, infants, and children. These efforts have identified problems related to the "state of the art" in both quality assurance and nutrition science. This article reviews the literature on quality assurance in nutritional care and summarizes the current efforts culminating in publication of a preliminary guide on quality assurance in ambulatory nutrition care by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.