Quality: What Does the Future Hold?

Quality has and continues to be a major focus of anesthesia care. Efforts to improve quality of care, optimize clinical outcomes, and transition goals of care to “value” based on quality and cost have received major emphasis over the past decade as health care costs have escalated. In the next decade, the balance of costs and quality will continue to be the basis for evaluating anesthesia care to individual patients, health systems, and payors. To do so will require a new focus. Bold futures do not happen without even bolder visions of what is possible. A confluence of recent events will forever change how quality care is provided and evaluated. First and foremost, health care is now falling into the Gartner “Trough of Disillusionment” (Figure 1),1,2 coming off the high hopes and expectations that existed with the widespread adoption of the electronic medical record. With the failures...