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CQ-index Mammacare: onderzoek naar het discriminerend vermogen: ervaren kwaliteit van zorg bij een borstafwijking vanuit het perspectief van patiënten.

Koopman, L., Rademakers, J. CQ-index Mammacare: onderzoek naar het discriminerend vermogen: ervaren kwaliteit van zorg bij een borstafwijking vanuit het perspectief van patiënten. Utrecht: NIVEL, 2008. 54 p.
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CQ-index breast care

The CQ-index breast care is a useful instrument to assess patients’ experiences with breast care. The CQ-index corresponds to an international trend, as NIVEL researchers show in their publication in the European Journal of Cancer.

Patient-centeredness has become central in many healthcare systems worldwide. Transparency is an important requirement: hospitals must be informed about their patients’ experiences to be able to improve aspects of low satisfaction. Consequently, patient satisfaction measurement has become routine in many countries. In this context, it is innovative to measure patients’ experiences (in stead of their satisfaction) and to compare these experiences with the importance patients attach to quality aspects. The Consumer Quality-index (CQ-index) is a new Dutch instrument by which patients’ experiences and their priorities can be measured. In the Netherlands, the CQ-index has become the national standard to measure patient experiences.

Quality improvement
Using the new CQ-index breast care, hospitals can assess specific quality aspects that need improvement. For example, breast cancer patients thought that information about a second opinion is very important, and they reported relatively negative experiences on that aspect. A quick appointment following referral or quickly available test results were also important to patients, but patients reported quite positive experiences in most hospitals. There is not much improvement potential on these aspects. The CQ-index informs about the relation between the importance that patients attaches to an issue and how often this aspect leads to a negative experience.

The CQ-index survey
The NIVEL regularly updates the CQ-index surveys. Hospitals that want to use the survey can download it from the website of the Centre for Consumer Experience in Healthcare. In addition to hospitals, other parties such as health Insurance companies and patient organisations can use the survey.