Quality and safety of healthcare have become key concepts during the last two decades on both national and international levels. In Germany this target of healthcare policy is currently regulated by a cascade of legal requirements and directives: all healthcare providers are bound to ensure and to improve the quality of delivered care, to participate in quality assurance programs, to implement quality management systems and to engage in critical incident reporting systems. Quality indicators are to be considered for both quality-based payment (pay-for-performance, P4P) and quality-based regulation of health care services.

Healthcare organisations develop their future strategy in alignment with quality management systems, due to changing framework conditions, the requirements of quality, safety and cost effectiveness, and prospective challenges. Healthcare professionals design higher-quality guidelines and guidances: evidence-based medicine, “choosing wisely”, clinical pathways and checklists are no longer words of foreign origin.

But: what is “quality”? What is a quality indicator? Does benchmarking mean more than an anonymised ranking? What does quality management comprise exactly? How is patient safety or an adverse event defined? What does risk management mean?

To these and more questions about quality, the glossary provides an answer. The object is a consistent, precise set of wording for the group of themes around “Terms and concepts of quality management” in healthcare. Current developments in quality of healthcare have been integrated, especially patient safety, risk management, quality reporting, assessment and certification of quality management systems.

The glossary therefore is a collection of basic terms with reference to relevant literature, institutions, societies and websites. The glossary addresses newcomers, supporting first steps in understanding quality and quality management in healthcare, and also professionals looking for a current methodological reference book.

Many terms are based on DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 and ONR 49000:2014, where the cited numbers refer to the chapter structure of this international standard. Few examples are mentioned in order to avoid going beyond the scope of a glossary. All 62 selected terms are the subject of commentary embedded in methodological concepts, completed with relevant references, and explained in the context of healthcare systems.

This glossary, first published in 1996, and then in 2003 and 2007 in a completely revised form, is now published with its 4^th edition by the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology (gmds) and the German Society for Quality Management in Healthcare (GQMG). Both societies accentuate therefore, that – referring to the expanding meaning of quality in healthcare in the context of healthcare policies, healthcare associations, and healthcare organisations – a consistent wording of terms and concepts of quality management in health care is now more important than ever.