Quality and Comprehensive Health Care: two necessarily interlinked concepts

Abstract

Two doctrinal proposals related with “Comprehensive Health Care” and “Quality of Care” concepts, are presented in this paper, as well as the theoretical basis of both concepts and their necessarily interlinkages.The empirical validation of the Comprehensive Health Care concept, along a period of 15 years is informed. Since 1958 until 1973, the academic Public Health Team of the Chair B of Preventive and Social Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile, led by Professor Dr. Benjamin Viel Vicuña, implemented and developed, in a poor council of the city of Santiago, a pionner experience in this field. As a key component of this Health Care model, the new focus on “Family Care” was also validated, complementing the unavoidable individual focus and the already “Community Health Care” historycalli developed in Chile.