What is the process of evaluating patient outcomes known as?

The process of evaluating patient outcomes is most appropriately termed "Outcome Assessment." This involves systematically measuring and analyzing the results of care interventions to determine their effectiveness in achieving desired health outcomes for patients. It's a critical aspect of nursing practice and healthcare quality, focusing on how well a treatment or intervention has worked based on specific, measurable benchmarks.

Outcome assessment includes various methods to gather data, such as patient surveys, clinical outcomes, and observational studies, which provide insight into how patients are responding to treatment. This information is essential for refining care approaches, enhancing patient safety, and improving overall health service delivery.

While patient evaluation and results interpretation are components of the broader process of assessing outcomes, they don't encompass the full scope of systematically assessing effectiveness as defined in outcome assessment. Data analysis, on the other hand, is a technique used within outcome assessment to make sense of collected information, but it does not capture the entirety of the evaluation process itself.