<P> The Donabedian model is a conceptual model that provides a framework for examining health services and evaluating quality of health care . According to the model, information about quality of care can be drawn from three categories: "structure," "process," and "outcomes ." Structure describes the context in which care is delivered, including hospital buildings, staff, financing, and equipment . Process denotes the transactions between patients and providers throughout the delivery of healthcare . Finally, outcomes refer to the effects of healthcare on the health status of patients and populations . Avedis Donabedian, a physician and health services researcher at the University of Michigan, developed the original model in 1966 . While there are other quality of care frameworks, including the World Health Organization (WHO) - Recommended Quality of Care Framework and the Bamako Initiative, the Donabedian Model continues to be the dominant paradigm for assessing the quality of health care . </P> <P> The model is most often represented by a chain of three boxes containing structure, process, and outcome connected by unidirectional arrows in that order . These boxes represent three types of information that may be collected in order to draw inferences about quality of care in a given system . </P>

Performance outcomes in health care are classified into three major categories