Final answer:
The acronym STEEEP in the IOM Healthcare Quality Initiative stands for Safe, Timely, Efficient, Equitable, Effective, Patient-centered, signifying the key dimensions to improve healthcare quality.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Healthcare Quality Initiative, the acronym STEEEP stands for Safe, Timely, Efficient, Equitable, Effective, Patient-centered. These six aims for improvement are envisaged to guide efforts to enhance the quality of healthcare in the United States. The focus on safety ensures patients are not harmed by the care that is intended to help them, while timeliness addresses reducing waits and sometimes harmful delays. Ensuring efficiency implies avoiding waste, particularly of equipment, supplies, ideas, and energy, while providing equitable care aims to provide care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status. Effectiveness focuses on care that is based on scientific knowledge to all who could benefit, rejecting treatments not likely to work, and patient-centered care involves providing care that is respectful of, and responsive to, individual patient preferences, needs, and values, ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.