It offers a set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system, a set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships, a suggested organizing framework to better align incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvement in quality, and key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems.

Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, this report also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

More information on the IOM Quality of Care Initiative