Quality of Life (Banja Luka) 4(3-4): 74-84

QUALITY OF LIFE IN TERTIARY HEALTHCARE SERVICES:
LESSONS FROM THE SAUDI ARABIA ACCREDITATION SYSTEM

WADI B. ALONAZI King Saud University, Riyadh 1151, Po Box 2459, waalonazi@ksu.edu.sa

Abstract: Complete physical, mental, and social well-being are antecedent propositions of ‘leading health’ (WHO, 2009). During evaluation or even measuring, self-reported outcomes are collected and considered ‘landmarks’ for patients, policy makers and society in general. Nothing could be a more reliable expression of health outcomes in today’s world than the self-reporting of one’s QoL. In addition to multidimensional indicators (Hajiran, 2006), medical care contributes substantially in improving QoL (Glimelius et al., 1996; Van den Berg et al., 2005) especially in tertiary care. On the other hand, Wholey and Hatry (1992) argued that few government agencies provide timely information on the quality and outcomes of their major pro- gramme. Practically, the achieved results are outcomes measurements revealing how often patients are harmed. The change in patients’ current and future health status that can be attributed to antecedent health care” is referred to by Donabedian (1980) as an outcome. He asserted that outcomes remain the ultimate valuators of the effectiveness and quality of medical care (2005). The functional scale, rather than the numeric or standardized scale on client satisfaction, is conceptualized to measure outcomes performance (Martin & Kettner, 1996). Outcomes are further consequences of outputs; they include Health-Related Quality of Life (Liu et al., 2007).

Thus, different tools and approaches had been implemented to measures QoL in contemporary health outcomes research but rarely correlated with quality of health performance.

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