To look up a health care term such as Actuary, choose the letter that the term begins with below under Alphabetical Glossary. This will take you to the terms beginning with that letter. To look up a health care acronym such as AIDS, choose the letter that the term begins with below under Acronyms. This will take you to all acronyms that begin with that letter.

Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB)	A person whose income falls below 100% of Federal poverty guidelines and whose resources do not exceed twice the resource limit of the SSI program, for whom the state must pay the Medicare Part B premiums, deductibles and co-payments. Also see specified low income Medicare beneficiaries.
Quality-Adjusted Life-Year	This unit of measure is one way to quantify health outcomes resulting from some type of intervention. The number of quality-adjusted life-years is the number of years at full health that would be valued equivalently to the number of years of life experienced in a less-desirable health state. For example, if a year of life confined to bed is considered on half as desirable as a year spent in full health, then 10 years of survival confined to bed would be counted as five quality-adjusted life-years.
Quality Assessment	An ongoing process to monitor and evaluate aspects of patient/medical care against pre-established criteria and standards to determine the medical necessity, appropriateness, and effectiveness of the services provided.
Quality Assurance	An interactive management process designed to objectively ensure the appropriateness and effectiveness of patient care. It includes identifying deficiencies, implementing corrective action(s) to improve performance, and monitoring the corrective actions to ensure that quality of care has been enhanced. In the broadest sense, this ongoing process should involve the medical and professional staff, the administration, and the governing body of the health care facility.
Quality Assurance Reform Initiative (QARI)	See quality improvement system for managed care (QISMC).
Quality Compass	Quality assessment tool developed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.
Quality Improvement	A continuous process that identifies problems in health care delivery, examines solutions to those problems, and regularly monitors the solutions for improvement.
Quality Improvement Organization (QIO)	Organization under contract with HCFA to review quality and cost issues for Medicare. Required to oversee MedicareHMOs. Formerly known as a peer review organization. Can also be used in a more general sense to refer to any independent quality review organization. Also see quality assurance.
Quality Improvement System for Managed Care (QISMC)	Guidelines established by the Federal government for quality assurance in Medicaid managed care plans.
Quality of Care	The degree or grade of excellence with respect to medical services received by patients, administered by providers or programs, in terms of technical competence, need, appropriateness, acceptability, humanity and structure.
Quality-Of-Life Measures	An assessment of patient's perceptions of how they deal with their disease or with their everyday life when suffering from a particular condition. It is subjective in the sense that the kinds of information cannot be measured objectively; however, it has been in health care literature for at least 20 years. It has been tapped in the area of pharmaceuticals most recently in the last five or six years. Through statistical means, the indices that have been developed to measure various aspects of quality of life have been validated over time, and we know that these measures are reliable and reproducible.