What approach emphasizes continuous assessment and improvement in healthcare organizations?

The approach that emphasizes continuous assessment and improvement in healthcare organizations is quality management. This holistic method incorporates an organization's strategic goals into a framework aimed at enhancing quality across all processes and outcomes. Quality management encourages the establishment of policies, objectives, and processes that lead to sustained improvements in patient care and operational efficiency.

Continuous assessment is a key element of quality management, emphasizing the need for regular evaluation of practices and outcomes to identify areas for improvement. This proactive stance enables healthcare organizations to adapt quickly to new challenges and to maintain high standards of care. Additionally, quality management fosters a culture of accountability and collaboration among staff, enhancing engagement in the quality improvement processes.

In contrast, quality assurance typically focuses on maintaining standards and ensuring compliance with regulations, without the same emphasis on ongoing assessment and improvement. Quality control is more about monitoring and measuring specific outcomes to ensure they meet required standards, often after the fact. Quality facilitation involves guiding and supporting quality improvement efforts but does not encompass the broader aspects of continuous improvement found in quality management.