EAGER: Mutual Understanding Theory of Health Care Quality Frontiers

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This EArly Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award provides funding for the development of a science of health care quality that can provide an explanatory theory of the determinants of quality, provide a contextualized framework for health service research to understand what works, generate a mathematical model of critical inputs/output interactions, and generate metrics that provide institutional guidance rather than report cards. As with any science, the structure includes a theory that explains observable phenomena, Axioms, or First Principles that generate testable hypotheses and models, identification of relevant ontology, and methodologies, and above all, be useful. Beside the rather substantial impact of potentially transforming health care quality from an art to a science, the use of Unified Component Modeling to develop mathematical models of the principle components of our Mutual Understanding Theory of Health Care Quality, will impact data mining techniques, predictive modeling, characterization of stochastic and deterministic systems, Bayesian learning and data-user interface methodologies.If successful, the results of this research will impact health care quality and cost, improve patient outcomes, and contribute to the broader field of service science. The increasing contribution of service industries to the American economy has opened interest in organizational structures that support service innovation, how to measure service productivity, the relationship between client satisfaction, including, marketing and objective outcome measures and appropriate methodologies for predicting service demand, service capacity, and inventorying employee skill-sets. This work will contribute to each of these areas.