Understanding the relationship between health care quality and the renal mass

Quality is increasingly important to all stakeholders of the U.S. health care system. Endeavors to measure and improve quality have moved forward in cardiovascular disease [1], diabetes care [2], and surgical wound infections [3]. However, in urology, such efforts have lagged. As a specialty, we are now faced with pressures, exerted primarily by payors, to roll out performance measures, or quality indicators, in the absence of science to support them. In this review, we discuss the broad concepts of health care quality and describe their relationships with small renal tumors.