Health Services Research: Scope and Significance
This chapter has provided a definition and history of the field of health services research and discussed how this field is examining quality-of-care issues and seeking to improve quality of care. Comparisons of current practice to evidence-based standards with feedback to clinicians and the integration of patient-reported outcomes are two examples of how HSR tools can be used to provide quality-improvement information for health care organizations. These examples utilize multiple data sources, including medical records, patient surveys, and administrative data. The opportunities for nurse researchers to provide invaluable contributions to the growing field of health services research are innumerable.