Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

In recent years, quality improvement has become a major priority in healthcare. As Investments in both financial and human resources in quality improvement have risen rapidly. As a result, many health quality performance measurements, known as quality indicators, have been developed. These indicators are used to identify how well health care is being delivered and where improvements can be made. Since healthcare resources are limited, it is important to focus on areas of health care performance that result in the most meaningful quality improvement. This research is intended to test a new method, using chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as a pilot, of using tools from economic evaluation to identify quality indicators that result in the highest health improvements for the population while considering the costs of delivering those health improvements.