There have always been medical standards of care in the American health-care sector. However, never before have they been so deeply incorporated in the delivery of health care as they are today. With the increased delivery of care through integrated delivery systems, as well as the development of the computerized patient record, medical standards of care are now used in innovative ways by providers and health plans in delivering health care to individual patients. There is great potential for even more (...) innovative uses of medical standards of care in the future.This article first presents a taxonomy of the medical standards of care that are involved in health-care delivery today Next, the article traces the historical evolution of medical standards of care since the early 1980s. Included in this discussion are the origins of the standard-setting movement as well as the developments that led to the way standards of care are currently used by large institutional providers and managed care plans to improve the quality of their health-care services. The article concludes with a brief analysis of the key legal issues that affect how standards of care can be used to improve the health care of patients. (shrink)