Quality overview
From HMCwiki
Contents |
What is quality
Quality is a little word with a lot of meanings. Six Sigma enthusiasts define it ‘Design to specification’. Edward Demings would say, ‘You can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but you can’t pull quality out of a hat.’ Philip Crosby claims, ‘Quality is free’. Even to introduce a wiki on the topic is to invite scrutiny. Quality without a context is an opinion of a definition. To know the meaning of quality is to grow the facets of its character. Quality is…
Achieving quality in healthcare
Hospitals approach "quality" the wrong way. Instead of analyzing "quality", hospitals should analyze processes and functions, outline desired outputs and build a cost effective way to consistently achieve those outcomes. Using a productivity-focused model will enable "quality" to be a natural outcome.
Patient safety had better be core to your quality program. What is amazing how many hospitals do not parallel the airline industry when it come to Close Call systems. Unless there are policies and systems in place that incentivize the detection of preventable errors, quality will primarily be learned through trial and error.
Cost of quality
- Safety Tips from Mountain Climbing
- Improving Healthcare Cost -- Quality is a "good" question, it's just not the FIRST question.
- Variation Reduces Quality; Increases Costs
- The Cost of Poor Quality
Measuring quality
Ten Signs of a Good Measure It measures what's important, not just what’s available.
Declare War On Errors And Defects ‘We need to become zealots against errors and waste.’
Avoiding Taught Helplessness Phenomenon in which people experience failure at a task, often numerous times. As a result, they decide the task cannot be done; at least by them: they are helpless. They stop trying. When failure starts, it generalizes self-blame to all things.
Evaluate Your Metric So many inferences which drive crucial decisions are made on such poorly representative data
How to Have a GREAT Accident The only waste is the one you didn’t learn from.
Blooper Book Turn lemons into lemonade.
Quality improvement
- Quality is inversely proportional to variability. Quality Improvement is the reduction of variability in products and processes. http://thequalityportal.com/glossary/q.htm
- A method of evaluating and improving processes of patient care which emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving, and focuses not on individuals, but systems of patient care which might be the cause of variations. http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/ems/emstraumasystem03/glossary.htm
- Measures undertaken in order to increase efficiency of actions and procedures with the purpose of achieving additional benefits for the organisation and its users. http://www.unizg.hr/tempusprojects/glossary.htm
- An approach to the study and improvement of the processes of providing healthcare services to meet needs of clients. http://www.qaproject.org/methods/resglossary.html
- Activities aimed at improving performance. http://www.hivportland.org/resources/acronyms.html
- An on-going process of methodologies that are designed to improve the delivery of preventative, diagnostic, therapeutic, and rehabilitative measures in order to maintain, restore and/or improve health outcomes of individuals and populations. http://www.umsl.edu/~optrgarz/policies_definitions.htm
- The actions taken to increase the value to the customer by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of processes and activities throughout the organizational structure. http://www.bizmanualz.com/ISO9000-2000/ISO_definitions.html
- A continuous process that identifies problems in health care delivery, tests solutions to those problems, and constantly monitors the solutions for improvement. http://www.woundcare.org/newsvol4n1/fy1.htm
