Quality is defined across six dimensions, requiring that health care meets the following criteria:
- Effective, delivering health care that is adherent to an evidence base and results in improved health outcomes for individuals and communities, based on need;
- Efficient, delivering health care in a manner which maximizes resource use and avoids waste;
- Accessible, delivering health care that is timely, geographically reasonable, and provided in a setting where skills and resources are appropriate to medical need;
- Acceptable/patient-centered, delivering health care that takes into account the preferences and aspirations of individual service users and the cultures of their communities;
- Equitable, delivering health care which does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, geographical location, or socioeconomic status;
- Safe, delivering health care which minimizes risks and harm to service users.
Source: Excerpted from WHO 2006c: Quality of care: a process for making strategic choices in health systems, 13