ABSTRACT
One of the areas of health care effort which has been “unchallenged” as being the exclusive domain of providers of health care has been that of the evaluation or assessment of health care quality. As a consequence, the involvement and participation of consumers in health care quality evaluation have to date been restricted despite acceptance of the legitimacy of consumer participation in other areas of health decision making. The most significant and potentially controversial issue, or set of issues, is the ideological one, namely, the legitimacy of consumer or lay assessment of health care quality. The traditional provider perspective on health care quality and its assessment views quality care essentially as technically competent performance on the part of the physician and, by extension, other professional providers of health care. Strategic for learning more about consumer criteria or decision making would be studies of “special” consumer groups.
