Safety and accountability in healthcare from past to present.

Abstract

Healthcare is transitioning into a new era-an era of accountability. This era demands heightened awareness of the quality, cost, and safety of healthcare, with value (quality/cost) and safety being the watchwords of accountability. Many factors are driving this transition, and it is affecting all healthcare disciplines, including radiation oncology. The transition is accompanied by the transformation of healthcare from a craft-based culture to an information-age culture in which patient needs and information are given top priority. These changes call for new measures to quantify and document the value and safety of procedures in radiation oncology.