Hospitais E Programas De Qualidade No Estado De São Paulo

The Health Administration field understands and deals with quality issues in a way that differs from what is seen in the industry. This article presents a survey done in a sample of 159 hospitals in São Paulo state during the second semester 1999 regarding the implementation of quality initiatives. The sample had public, philanthropic, non-philanthropic and university hospitals. Among 97 hospitals answering the survey, 23% said they had some quality initiatives. The other 77%, whose answer was negative, blamed high costs, delayed results and lack of need for that fact. Most of those that had the initiatives did not know much about their costs and their consequences. Almost all of those that answered positively said they monitored managerial indicators.